The mission of H.O.P.E. is to turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth, back upstream so that Earth's evolving consciousness may explore the headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come. The work of H.O.P.E. is to make visible the larger relationships we live within - relationships that inspire visions of wonder and works of hope.

Winter rains are falling on the surrounding hills. Fortunately, many of the storms have fallen on weekends so I have had many opportunities to go out in the rain and do my diverging work. The work deepens my conscious awareness of the dance patterns between the land and the rain that fascinate me. So the February issue of Cairns tends to be heavy on thoughts about shifting water. For me, it feels like I am deepening my understanding each time but for some of you who arenít really into water, these sections might sound repetitious with what Iíve said before.

Iíve intended to write a short piece on the difference between a bush and a boulder in terms of what effects each has on flowing water. Water flows through a bush; water flows around a boulder. A bush vibrates, absorbing and dissipating some of the energy of the flood so erosion is less. A boulder merely pushes the water aside, often concentrating and intensifying the erosive force to either side of the boulder.

But this winerís rains taught me that the story is not as simple as that. As water flows through the bushes, the bushes act like collanders, straining out floating debris of leaves and branches. As the bush accumulates this debris, it gradually transforms from a bush to a ìboulderî. Water can no longer flow through it. Water starts to push against the clogged-up bush much harder than it did when it could flow through the bush. The bush barrier now pushes water to the side; its concentrated force starts to erode away the base of the bush. The stream starts to uproot the bush, tipping it downstream. Therefore, Iím starting to think that bushes intended for erosion control require a certain maintenance; they need their debris cleaned off after each large flood. Rather than thinking of this as maintenance, I suppose I could think of this as harvesting the streamís gift of organic debris and spreading it around to nourish the streamside vegetation.

Probabilistic Shifts
Each winter storm reminds me of something I call ìprobabilistic shiftsî. Have you seen the models of  normal distribution in which balls cascade down through a series of pegs? Each peg makes the ball bounce to the right or the left. A ball that bounces left-left-left will end up in a different place at the bottom than a ball that bounces right-right-right. But most of the balls will follow a path somewhere in between. The distribution of the balls at the bottom resembles the normal distribution curve.

The similarity between balls bouncing off pegs and runoff spliting around a myriad of divergences (sticks, clumps of grass, etc.) is most apparent on an alluvial fan where the shape of the land spreads the water out. In most of a drainage, however, the shape of the land tends to converge runoff together. So I see my work as the creation of ìpegsî that split runoff and spread it so that instead of gathering quickly together, the runoff will diverge, some going one way and some the other. I might not ever find a single place where I can lead the runoff around an eroding section but if I can create enough ìpegsî upstream, I know with certainty that some of the water will end up amazingly far from its original channel.

ìProbabilistic shiftsî is a counterweight to a tendency I have to want one solution. A tendency to want to impose a more definitive model that doesnít truly fit the terrain. A tendency to try compressing a long, complex series of tiny cause and effect sequences into a short, simple sequence of big cause and effects. ìProbabilistic shiftsî is sort of a quantum mechanics approach, that I canít control the path of any particular molecule of water (such as a ditch would do) but by putting lots of guard rails up where water flows, I know a certain proportion of the runoff will end up away from the converging center. Probabilistic shifts keeps my hopes alive in situations where I can not see a way to make a significant difference. Put in the ìpegsî, create more ways for things to diverge, and new possibilities will emerge downstream.

Gradient of Erosion
My erosion work continues to evolve. A few years ago, my work concentrated on doing certain ìplaysî in places where the erosional forces created certain repeating patterns - most often at the upper and lower end of a gully. However,  the more I dance with the earth in the rain,  I develop experience with other areas of the drainage.

Throughout a drainage (and every square inch of land is somewhere within a drainage), every part of a watershed can be anywhere on the erosion gradient from extreme erosion (a narrow waterfall downcutting the head of a gully) to extreme deposition (the head of an alluvial fan where runoff coming out of an eroding gully system first diverges and drops part of its load). Each place is causally linked with the area around it so that what is happening in one area will influence the areas around it. Each place has a look and feel depending on where it is upon the erosion gradient and whether it is moving along the gradient towards either more erosion or less. For example, a gully (an area of extreme erosion) that is still eroding will be steep-walled with a narrow downcut at the bottom whereas a gully that just recently changed direction and has shifted to a place where erosion no longer occurs will not be as steep-walled, will have a broader, flatter bottom with grass colonizing the bottom and some of the sidewalls. As I interact with these patterns more, each location on the gradient begins suggesting a different ìplayî appropriate to it, a different strategy for shifting it away from the erosion end of the gradient. There is always something I can do no matter where I am. The dance grows richer.

Evolving Topography of a Watershed
These experiences also deepen another thought. Water shapes the land, both by carrying away soil and by nourishing soil-creating plants. It does this in various proportions depending on rainfall patterns, temperature, slope,  and the nature of the soil and bedrock. But there are general patterns underlying all of this. Eroding water tends to downcut which tends to concentrate the water further which increases erosion more. Eventually the channel cuts so deeply that it eliminates the steepness of the streamís gradient. The downward cutting ceases. On the other hand, areas of gentle slopes tend to slow down flowing water which causes the water to deposit some of its bedload. These deposits build up the slope, steepening the channel until the water no longer slows down enough to deposit. Given enough time, these feedback loops will bring a watershed to an equilibrium with many certain predictable patterns.

But when life appears, when grass grows on the upper slopes,  each stem is a divergence (a probabilistic shift). The water does not converge quite as fast. The water does not gather quite as much power. And so slopes can stand a bit steeper before they start to erode and deposition will begin on slightly steeper slopes. Though such a landscape will express the same patterns, it will be expressed with a steeper slope. So life subtlely alters the underlying shape of the land.

Eye Showing
Watching one of our dogs, I suddenly realized at a more conscious level, that eyes are organs of showing. In schools, we learn that eyes are organs of seeing for receiving information from the world. However, eyes are also the most highly developed organs for showing the internal state of the creature. We all know that; we say that eyes are a window to the soul or that when we look into the eyes of another, we see the face of God. But how does that happen? What are the mechanisms by which eyes communicate the inner state? The eyes are so proximate to the brain and the processing of input begins before neural signals even leave the eye that one could consider the eyes as part of the brain. So it makes sense that they express the totality of the creatureís inner state. But what are all the mechanisms (tear ducts, pupil contraction muscles, etc.) by which this happens? Or to put it another way, what if one studies human eyes in the same way an ethologist studied the way a dog holds its tail or a goose holds its head? Such a question suggests a wonderful way to marry the holistic scientific approach with the reductionist scieintific approach.

This relates to another thought. A classic repeating pattern in human relationships is one person using words to lie but the other person somehow eventually sensing the truth, often through the liarís eyes. We radiate the truth of ourselves through so many unconscious paths that I wonder why we bother trying to lie. And why do we even want to avoid the truth? Acknowledging truth is what initiates learning and growth. The flip side of this spiritual homily is what happens to a person who practices locking the eyes down so they donít ìbetrayî/communicate oneís inner state? Again, this question is most easily thought of in spiritual terms but it is also interesting to contemplate from the reductionist point of view. What does a person do to themselves physiologically to ìhardenî the eyes so they wonít betray the lie and because of the intimate physiological connection between eyes and brain, what cause-effect sequences does that hardening initiate and how far do they ripple through the mind/body?

Point of View
Our students at Chrysalis are learning astronomy. Lots of the conceptual breakthroughs in the early history of astronomy depended on changing oneís point of view. For example, realizing that the Earth was rotating rather than the stars revolving around required shifting your point of view from the surface of the Earth to an explanation that is best visualized from somewhere out in space looking back at a spinning Earth. Or understanding why Mercury and Venus are never seen in the middle of the night requires point of view looking ìdownî on the solar systemís orbital plane. So one of the meta-skills of astronomy that needs to be taught is changing oneís point of view. Therefore I came up with the following activity which the kids really enjoyed.

The class sits in a large circle. In the middle of the circle are three balls of different color and size. Each student has paper and crayons. On the back of the paper, they write their names. Then each student draws the balls as they appear from that studentís point of view. Then I collected the papers, shuffled them and passed them around again. The challenge was to try figuring out who drew the picture you now have. To figure this out, you have to figure what position in the circle would lead to the point of view in that drawing. Once youíve decided, you turn the paper over, look at the name, and see how close you got. Then I collect the papers again, shuffle them, and repeat.

Video reversals - 2nd Law
I teach beginning video making at Chrysalis. This last month, the kids got really excited when they learned how easily iMovie on the iMac can reverse video clips. This led them to filming as many situations as we could think of that might be funny or weird when played backwards. Their fascination with this topic led me to think that the many minutes of reversed videos we had created might be a way to introduce students to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. So I showed the reversed videos to the junior high class and asked them to articulate what made these movies strange. We filled the board with comments. Some were specific such as ìthings falling up.î There were also four lovely generalizations: ìReverses the laws of physics.î ìThings generate energyî (such as balls bouncing higher and higher or rolling faster and faster towards peopleís hands). ìThings spread inî (such as ripples converging toward the spot where a stone then comes flying out of the water. This effect is also heard; sound swells and then ends abruptly.) ìEffects become the cause of their causes.î (One of the most surprising examples of this was of a boy jumping up and down while swinging a napkin vigorosly up into the air. In reverse, it looks exactly as if the napkin is shooting up like a rocket, pulling the boy up into the air.)

These comments revealed that the kids had already internalized the consequences of the Second Law. This seems obvious upon reflection that the Second Law is a quantitative generalization of an all-pervasive and shaping tendency within the universe. If a mind lives for many years within this universe, the Second Law has to be part of the mental construct. But it doesnít have to be conscious. Playing the videos in reverse allows this understanding to become conscious. The lesson was a wonderful way to use childrenís own experience and sense of the world to make them more aware of the reality of the Second Law.

Zoo Kids vs. Wild Kids
In an earlier issue, I recommended The Nature Institute. (Iíve included a link to them on the Kindred Souls page of my website.) I received their December newsletter and it has many stimulating articles.

One article is about the difference in skulls between zoo lions and their wild counterparts still living in the area where the zoo lions were taken. The zoo lion skulls are larger but the largeness is due to a spongier bone so the brain case is actually smaller. The author suggests that the difference stems from the muscular activity required of the wild lions to kill prey. This regular exertion shapes the bones, developing denser bone.

The day after reading this, I was leading children on explorations of the Redding Arboretum. As the class walked on the sidewalk from the school toward me, the teacher led the way. For the most part, the girls followed behind the teacher and tagging in disarray behind were groups of boys with their energy turned in upon their physical interactions. As we moved onto the Arboretum and left the trails, the boys moved to the front, fanned out and became focused on the world, functioning as scouts for the entire group. It felt like a band of primates moving across the savannah. The boys were turning wild, not wild in the sense of disruptive in the classroom but wild in the sense of some prehistoric programming reasserting itself.  Because of the lion article, I had this sense of those boys growing up as zoo animals. The mind and body develop very differently in such a setting.

Redwoods and Looping
Another articles in the Nature Institute newsletter had the following passage [which the newsletter did not agree with].
Similarly reaching across disparate domains, the influential philosopher Daniel Dennett asks why trees in the forest expend so much energy growing tall. He answers: ìfor the very same reason that huge arrays of garish signs compete for our attention along commercial strips....Each tree is looking out for itself and trying to get as much sunlight as possible.î Invoking the Prisonerís Dilemma, he goes on:
ëIf only those redwoods could get together and agree on some sensible zoning restrictions and stop competing with each other for sunlight, they could avoid the trouble of building those ridiculous and expensive trunks, stay low and thrifty shrubs, and get just as much sunlight as before!í
But, like the prisoners, the trees cannot get together, and therefore ìdefection from any cooperative ëagreementí is bound to pay off if ever or whenever it occurs.î Such agreements would be ìevolutionarily unenforceableî.

This quote brought me up short; the guy canít see the forest for the trees. The massive trees that Dennett sees as a ìdefection from any cooperative agreementî, I see as a massive creation of surface area, one of the most important leverage point for changing a whole host of rates underlying biological processes. Creation of massive surface areas is one of the most important ìecological servicesî created by life. (This is why paving parking lots saddens me so much; our destroying of the ecological service seva work offered by all the other species.)

Dennettís quote made me realize how unconsciously far Iíve evolved away from the ìselfish geneî sort of reductionism. I have absolutely no doubt that the gene is not the only level at which natural selection happens. I am absolutely sure that natural selection also happens at the ecosystem level. Natural selection will favor ìloopingî in which a species uses some of the energy it has harvested from its environment to create structures or do work that alters flows through the ecosystem in ways that accumulate ìpossibilitiesî within the ecosystem. If some species within that ecosystem can then evolve some way to use some of those possibilities in a way that eventually benefits the original species, a feedback loop is formed connecting the well-being of the two species. The original species acquires an ally which, in its own, probably unconscious, way, will help the original species to thrive and continue its work.

This flows into a letter Dolores LaChappelle sent me in which she recommended an article by Ruth Benedict, ìSynergy: Patterns of a Good Cultureî. (She also wrote to correct a few attributions (she said that it was Korzinski, not Bateson, who said ìThe map is not the territoryî.) The article was based post-humously on lecture notes from the mid-1940ís. I have no idea of whether later anthropological research has corroborated or refuted Benedictís point in the article but her idea resonates with my analogies of water, erosion and Gaia.

The article begins by acknowledging the diversity of cultures. As an example of this diversity, Benedict says it is almost impossible to find any behavior (she uses the example of suicide) or cultural institution that manifests in the same way in every culture that has that institution or behavior. However, Benedict believed that underlying all this diversity were certain general patterns. The article concentrates on ìsynergyî by which Benedict meant the degree to which the actions of individuals synergize with the actions of others. She saw two basic cultural/economic models into which most cultures could be grouped. The first model she calls the funnel system in which cultural resources tend to get funneled to a few. Though these systems possess an accumulating feedback loop of the rich getting richer (the heart of my criticism of corporate globalization), the important point from Benedictís point of view is that the gain of one person is at the expense of others. Itís what some call a zero sum game. Many of the games our children are raised on are zero sum gains. One person wins means another person loses; the two events are simultaneous. Benedict characterizes these cultures as low synergy because the efforts of individuals are at odds with others in the culture.

Benedict calls the other model the syphon system because the accumulations of resources, wherever they accumulate within the culture, get syphoned by the culture to the needs of everyone in the culture. The important point Benedict makes about this model is that the culture is set up so that whoever has the accumulated resources get status, power, etc. when the syphoning happens (psychologically completely different than our cultureísystem of welfare). She says that the culture has created ways in which the needs of the culture and the needs of the individual synergize. The individual wins when the culture wins and the culture wins when the individual wins. Not a zero sum game. Hereís a quote:
"From all comparative material the conclusion that emerges is that societies where nonaggression is
conspicious have social orders in which the individual by the same act and at the same time serves his own advantage and that of the group. The problem is one of social engineering and depends upon how large the areas of mutual advantage are in any society. Nonaggression occurs not because people are unselfish and put social obligations above personal desires but because social arrangements make these two identical. Considered just logically, production - whether raising yams or catching fish - is a general benefit, and if no man-made institutions distort the fact that every harvest, every catch, adds to the village food supply, a man can be a good gardener and be also a social benefactor. He is advantaged, and his fellows are advantaged.î

She then goes on to generalize that the funnel model tends to create cultural atmospheres of fears of scarcity, fears of the intentions of others, and aggression. She generalizes that the syphon model tends to create atmospheres of ìweíre all in it togetherî cooperation and security (because if circumstances take you down temporarily, then the resources of the culture become available to you).

One of the implications of the article for me is that evolving cultures are sensitive to and are being shaped by the same system dynamics that shape ecosystems towards looping behaviors. I sense that the biological/cultural challenge of life is that the ìfunnellingî approach is very powerful in the short term but unsustainable in the long-term.
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