Feeding My Ignorance

Just at this moment life seems to be very full of "situations" and it is clear that each situation can only be influenced to a limited extent.  In some cases that may well mean that no influence can be brought to bear and I don't think there is any where full control can be applied.  For these situations it is crucial that efforts are focussed on what can be influenced - and not wasted on the rest.

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The so-called Serenity Prayer is oft quoted and has much relevance here :

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

This is only the first part of the prayer which goes on to talk about trust in God to make "all things right".

It is, of course, much easier said than done to "accept" what cannot be changed - if only because we tend to question the "cannot" within that sentence.  I guess that is where the "wisdom" is supposed to come in.  Unfortunately, our wisdom will - almost certainly - be less than it should be!!  The whole premise of this blog is that we do not "know" as much as we 'ought to' - and in situations where there is pressure to "do something" our lack of knowledge will result not in the necessary "acceptance" but instead an even greater willingness to seek out that which is 'unknown' in order to find a way to change the situation.

In moderation this is all very well.  It may even work when there is only a single 'situation' to be addressed.  How often do we find ourselves with such luxury and freedom?  Inevitably there will be things going on in our lives that - to a greater or lesser degree - need to be "sorted out".

The "situations" that I am discussing here include at least nine relating to people who are close.  Each has a "problem" (or in some cases multiple problems) that are causing some sort of difficulty to them - and those around them.  My "systemic" outlook that I have described in these posts means that it is inevitable that the "problems" are made all the worse because those involved are themselves affecting each other.

This post is not about the specific situations - its a sort of "meta-" investigation into the phenomena caused by the individual situations interacting - even though they themselves are not 'connected' the impact is felt by many involved.  Trying to sort out the meta-situation highlights the increased difficulty of deciding what we can - or cannot - influence.

The extent of influece that can be exerted is limited by many things - and is constrained most of all by the fact that we cannot influence the "root cause" in any case - at best we can address (some of) the symptoms and try to alleviate them.  In some cases the "root cause" is simply unchangeable - in some cases it is outwith our range of skills and expertise - in some cases there are barriers which limit our effectiveness in addressing a situation.

Most of all - there is limited time - and we each have limited capacity, not least because "overdoing it" will result in an increase in the number of "situations"!!  There is also a further 'time pressure' - that results from the simple, and unavoidable, fact that time passes - therefore things change.  So often we concentrate on "solving a problem" whilst failing to recognise that "the problem" is continually morphing to something else and our solutions are - if not too late - addressing the 'old' problem not the current one.

Some years ago I wrote a note entitled "Time to Make a Decision" - a title which can be taken two ways (at least).  The premise of the argument in that paper was that inevitably there are varying "time horizons" for decisions to be made.  Whenever considering a 'situation' there needs to be a equal consideration given to both the rate of change of the situation and the 'deadline' for resolving it - or at least making a choice as to how to address the resolution of it.

These time horizons govern a number of aspects of the decision making process that we follow.  Not only that, but the passage of time will necessarily cause (eventually) changes as well - changes both to the situation and to the way we must think about the situation.

There are many aspects of this that I could explore - but for the purposes of this blog entry I want to concentrate on a single one - and again it is the "meta-" level that I want to discuss.

The "time to make a decision" is - crucially - not necessarily the same for everyone involved.  In this respect it mirrors in some way the "what can/cannot be changed" dichotomy - just because something "cannot be changed" by me does not mean that it is a universally unchangeable situation - someone else may well have the key to unlock it.  Thus the serenity prayer that I quoted above is, perhaps, too impersonal - instead of "cannot be" it might be "I cannot" and instead of "should be" - perhaps "I should".

Is there anything that is really "unchangeable"?  Certainly there are many things that I cannot change - that I cannot even influence for change.  That is a deeper philosophical point that we must avoid at this time.  The lesson that I want to draw out here is that in the multiply intertwining situations that we face - sometimes the way to "change" is not by tackling the 'obvious', but by being aware of how an "intervention" elsewhere might push the whole thing into a different "attractor".

I've started to bring in terms that are - perhaps - not in such common usage outside some of my own areas of special interest.  An "attractor" is, in this sense, a term borrowed from the study of complex systems.  It represents a position in the landscape that pulls everything towards it.  A simplistic example might be to think about when you are wandering through an unfamiliar town looking for somewhere to eat.  Chances are you will be "drawn" towards a particular area of town where there are a number of restaurants - this is an "attractor" for this situation - you are more likely to eat in one of these restaurants than in the (perhaps much better) restaurant that is situated on its own in a back street.

The latter will need to cause people to take a 'detour' - to increase its "attraction" - this sort of thing is what advertisements are trying to achieve.

So - our intervention can be (naively) either to push the system away from the current attractor - addressing the reasons why things are as they are - or they can be an attempt to increase the pull of an alternative attractor - increasing the attractiveness of other situations.

These sort of things tend to be self reinforcing - either positively or negatively.  It is bad to be "stuck in a rut" - it is worse to be on a downward spiral of self perpetuating problems.  In the situations that are around I can see "rut" situations - I can see "downward spirals" - I can see attempts to push towards new attractors.  I can also see seeming "acceptance" of the situation - unfortunately that can too often be simply despair rather than contentment.  The former characterised by "I can't do anything to help it" rather than simply being "resigned" to the situation.

As well as the "obvious" there can be some counter-intuitive interactions between the situations - a downward spiral in one place can, perhaps seemingly perversely, cause a positive leap elsewhere.  Unfortunately the opposite is also possible - as one situation eases it releases the pressure that was stopping another from spiralling downwards.  This is bad enough in itself - it becomes worse if that "pressure" is also what was easing the situation.

Why am I saying all this - to highlight that whilst it is "easy" to say that "things are complicated" - there reality is that these situations are highly complex and "doing the right thing" becomes almost an impossibility.  Whatever you "do" will almost inevitably have some good effects and some bad - what helps one situation may be tothe detriment of another.

In addition the old adage "you can't change just one thing" will always hold true - the extent of the truth will be relative to the interconnectivity of the different situations.  Anyone with a basic understanding of combinatorial mathematics will quickly grasp the scale of the problem.  Perhaps the "nine" that I stated above seems a small number - however that does involve thirty six possible two person relationships - lets ignore the groups bigger than two for a moment.

That number of relationships (36) is only internal to the group - each of the nine will have a (reasonably large) number of contacts that are not in the group.  These contacts, in turn, cannot be taken as 'just' individuals - because the original "nine" are closely connected it is certain that a proportion of them will be connected to more than one of the nine - so - the relationships grow again.

Once the fact that any of these connections can be causing positive or negative change to the system it becomes abundantly clear that simply figuring out what effect any change will have is next to impossible.  That is not to say that we just give up.  Just because things are complex is no reason to give up on trying to change what we can.  It merely changes the expectation levels and, hopefully, allows for a better understanding of the effects of any intervention we make.

I think I will end with the 'amended' version of the prayer:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that I cannot change,
Courage to change the things
which I should change,
the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other,
and the insight to foresee
the possible effects of the change.