or: the lack of cohesion-awareness.

In The Netherlands we have in our public transport trains the concept of silent compartments (quiet areas). Abundantly signalled in the compartments, the idea is that people are quiet in there, so that you can concentrate on work or just relax. There's often people who pretend they have not seen the signals, or just because they do not want to acknowledge the concept, and talk or make other loud noises. Understandably this annoys other travellers. However the simple act of asking the perpetrators to be quiet has almost just as often the opposite effect. They become even more angry, and the conflict (as many conflict nowadays seem to do…) often escalates to dangerous levels. I was even suggested by the railway helpdesk, on complaining about this, that my best option would be to move to another compartment…

Another problem that irritates a lot of people is traffic jams. Sometimes they even seem to pop up out of nowhere and disappear just as silently. Of course most really large tailbacks are caused by accidents. What most people do not realise (because of the lack of cohesion-awareness) is that the net time to arrive at your destination can be minimised by a very simple trick: do not drive too fast!

I remember the (then) minister responsible for infrastructure saying she "could not explain speed limits". I would say that explaining things like that is exactly her responsibility! Research has shown that a speed limit of 70 km/h on our congested roads would result in congestion disappearing and faster net arrival times. How can you not explain that?

As a small child my mother, as many mothers (and fathers) still do, took me to feed the ducks. Old and stale bread in a basket. I loved seeing the birds flock to get the food.

Near my office there is a pond with, surprise, ducks. I guess the ritual is repeated many times each day, only it is not just ducks that get fed. Masses of seagulls appear as well. The escalating problem that city councils face is that all this feeding attracts seagulls. Because of the abundance of food they start nesting on roofs, creating an awful lot of problems with their droppings and all. Most of the food gets spilled however, by sinking in the water, and gets to feed animals you definitely do not want to profligate in your cities and towns like rats! This food extravaganza is a potential cause of many diseases as well.

Complex systems are rife with feedback mechanisms. Most of these are very hard or actually impossible to detect and document. They are so much interwoven that it is impossible to see where one ends and another starts. It is the web of interconnected and interdependent things. However my impression is that not many people pay attention to those interdependencies. Or are even willing to consider that they miss most of them.

A story told by the "granddaughter of Chroestjev" Nina Khrushcheva (in fact she was his great-granddaughter) of a visit by a relative from her niece from Russia, in Vienna where Nina lived. They took a bus, and Nina stamped her ticket in the machine in the bus. Her niece exclaimed: "why do you do that? There is no-one to enforce that!". That, Nina explained, is the difference between Russia and "the West". "In Russia you only do something out of fear of getting caught, while I choose to pay for my ticket because I know that is what it costs to maintain that service on a level that, in the end, benefits me and everyone else."

For Americans the fact that Swedish people actually want to pay taxes is incomprehensible. Their first priority is to minimise the amount they have to pay, and paying no taxes whatsoever is best. A deep and mostly subconscious mistrust of government seems to be behind this. For the Swedes the American attitude feels quite stupid: by paying taxes they are able to create and maintain a high quality of living for all citizens that they see is totally lacking in the United States.

On the last Dutch National Architecture Conference (LAC) I did a short survey in a session I did (called "Embracing the Future") where the audience consisted of mostly architects. My question was how they responded to the road signs that are sometimes activated telling the drivers to maximise their speeds to 70 km/h. My expectation was that, being architects, they would be more than average inclined to actually comply. In practice we see that most drivers, especially when there does not seem to be a direct need to reduce speed, do not comply and continue driving with 120 km/h or more. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed that it seemed that only a handful raised their hands. The reason I thought they would comply more, is that compliance would, overall, result in more efficient traffic flow and less congestion which, in the end, would also benefit themselves. And architects especially would be an audience appreciating these arguments, or so I thought.

A (Dutch) book from 1966 recently came to my attention, written by the Dutch cultural philosopher Feitse Boerwinkel, called "Inclusive thinking - a different time requires a different way of thinking". A very small book (only 98 pages) it was maybe the most influential inspiration for a whole cultural and educational reform in The Netherlands, completely in line with the spirit of the time.

Feitse argues for a different way of thinking he calls "inclusive thinking". I have talked about the shift to sequential thinking that took place over a long period from the classical Greece to the Renaissance. As does Feitse, I think we are now in an era in which we are again shifting our mental mode towards a non-sequential, inclusive, time-transcending way of thinking. The movie "Arrival" depicts an alien species that completely transcended sequential thinking and even tells the story of a language that is completely non-sequential.

Time-bound thinking is coming to an end. Jan-Peter van der Berg, the Dutch psychiatrist,devoted an entire book on this development, which he traces from the European Middle Ages to the (then: 1970) present: Dieptepsychologie ("Depth Psychology"). In the book he talks about the rise (after the Middle Ages) and fall (in the hippie years) of the subconscious part of our minds as a somehow separate or dissociated part of ourselves.

This development is one we are smack in the middle of, which makes it hard (and for many: impossible) to see. I think the evolution of humankind is mostly a mental one, and the direction in which we are moving is so very interesting.

You might want to read my article "Why software bites back".

This is the Dutch translation of The Bonobo Architect.

Voor een succesvolle implementatie van architectuur in een organisatie, of het nu een project is of een multinational enterprise, is het karakter van de architect (-en) van groot belang. Niet verbazingwekkend. Wij weten allemaal dat de mens de belangrijkste factor is in het spel. Toch?

Zeker in het spel in en rond politiek "zwaar geladen" organisaties (en welke organisatie is dat niet?) leven allerlei opvattingen en ideeën over leiderschap en welke karaktereigenschappen nu het meest "effectief" zijn. Een aantal van die ideeën worden "ondersteund" vanuit min of meer gefundeerde kennis die wij hebben over de biologische eigenschappen van de mens. Of misschien moet ik zeggen de "dierlijke" eigenschappen van de mens.

Over de intrinsieke aard van de mens doen allerlei verhalen de ronde. Is de mens "van nature" een sociaal wezen? Of is ieder individu "van nature" zelfzuchtig en egoïstisch? Gaan we voor overleving van onszelf, desnoods ten koste van anderen? Of hebben wij een "ingeboren" besef van het belang van het grote geheel, en het feit dat het voor de overleving van de "groep" of de "soort" soms beter is individuen, en dan met name onze eigen individualiteit, op te offeren? Of in ieder geval op het tweede plan te zetten?

Ik weet het antwoord op deze vragen niet. Alleen heb ik gemerkt dat het verhaal van de mens als "jager", en de constatering dat de mens "altijd" al oorlogen heeft gevoerd en zich door agressie heeft laten leiden, mij nooit heeft geboeid. Er is voldoende materiaal om andere hypotheses minstens even serieus te nemen. Geïnspireerd door het baanbrekende werk van Marija Gimbutas en vele anderen die een beeld schetsen van onze menselijke geschiedenis dat radicaal anders is dan het gangbare. Net zoals de algemene constatering van het leven als beheerst door "survival of the fittest" mij altijd in de oren heeft geklonken als een politiek gekleurde neerslag van de tijdgeest waarin die zinsnede is ontstaan, zo rond 1860. Een periode waarin de burgeroorlog in de Verenigde Staten woedde, Denemarken en Duitsland in oorlog raakten, Oostenrijk Duitsland binnenvalt, Japan wordt aangevallen door meerdere landen, Rusland oorlogen voerde langs zijn grenzen. Tegelijk begon de emancipatie van kleurlingen en vrouwen schoorvoetend, waardoor voor de gevestigde orde allerlei "zekerheden" bedreigd werden.

Onze nauwste verwanten in het dierenrijk, de chimpansees en de bonobo's kunnen wellicht dienen als referentiemateriaal. Relatief buiten de invloed van onze menselijke tijdgeest (hoewel ik daarover twijfels heb in het bijzonder met betrekking tot de chimpansees, die aan intensief contact met mensen hebben blootgestaan en de laatste jaren een ingrijpend veranderproces lijken door te maken, maar daarover wellicht een andere keer meer) spiegelen deze wezens aspecten van onze eigen aard.

Naar beide soorten is onderzoek gedaan. De chimpansee het langst, want de bonobo is pas "ontdekt" in 1929. Iedereen heeft van Jane Goodall gehoord die jarenlang samen heeft geleefd met enkele chimpansee groepen. De naam die het meest is verbonden met de bonobo, een andere mensaap die minstens even nauw is verwant aan de mens, is de Nederlandse etholoog en primatoloog Frans van der Waal. Over de cognitieve mogelijkheden van de bonobo kun je bijvoorbeeld iets lezen over Kanzi,

Beide soorten zijn bijna symbolisch voor de twee door mij hierboven genoemde tegenstellingen:

• de mens als in wezen gedreven door agressie, zelfbehoud, seksuele mannelijke dominantie (chimpansee)
• of de mens als een sociaal wezen dat de groep en de soort boven zijn eigen zelfbehoud stelt, en vrouwelijke dominantie (bonobo).

Ik gebruik vooral het onderzoek naar die bijzondere en intrigerende mensaap, de bonobo, om een stijl van architectuur te introduceren die kan functioneren als een genezende kracht in organisaties die worstelen met hun "chimpansee" aard.

Wat zijn nu die bijzondere eigenschappen van de bonobo?

Eerst even een potentieel misverstand uit de weg ruimen. De bonobo mensaapsoort wordt vaak wel de "seksuele aap" genoemd. Menselijke waarnemers viel het al heel snel op dat binnen bonobo groepen seks voortdurend wordt gebruikt om conflicten te sussen en spanningen te ontladen. Ik wil niet suggereren dat wij die strategie in onze organisaties in gelijke mate moeten toepassen. Het gaat mij meer om andere eigenschappen en strategieën, en die wil ik hier graag voor het voetlicht brengen.

Omgaan met conflicten

De Bonobo apen hebben een manier van sociale interactie ontwikkeld die zeer effectief is in het omgaan met conflicten. Waar grote aantallen individuen samengroepen zullen altijd conflicten ontstaan. Bonobo apen proberen conflicten niet uit de weg te gaan, te vermijden of te voorkomen. Ze zijn juist meesters in het omgaan met conflicten, een conflict onmiddellijk onderhanden nemen.

Een experiment, beschreven door Brian Hare, waarbij zowel chimpansees en bonobos werden uitgedaagd. Voedsel lag op een platform dat alleen binnen handbereik gebracht kon worden als de groep samenwerkte. Beide groepen slaagden erin om het voedsel te pakken te krijgen. Maar het verschil was groot. De bonobos waren veruit het snelst. Zij begonnen met samen spelen, en het voedsel werd vrolijk verdeeld in de groep. De chimpansees worstelden vanaf het begin met hun onderling competitief gedrag en maakten uiteindelijk ruzie over het verkregen voedsel.

Brian Hare heeft ook de theorie dat bonobos zichzelf gedomesticeerd hebben, ongeveer vergelijkbaar met mensen die honden gedomesticeerd hebben: Tame Theory: Did Bonobos Domesticate Themselves?.

Hoe je het ook bekijkt, bonobos lijken in velerlei opzicht beschaafder dan chimpansees. Of mensen. Het is zeker niet zo dat conflicten in bonobo gemeenschappen niet voorkomen. Integendeel, er zijn voortdurend onenigheden, zoals in elke gemeenschap. Maar zoals Frans de Waal constateert: er is geen enkel geval bekend van bonobos die door hun soortgenoten fysiek verwond zijn, iets dat bij chimpansees aan de orde van de dag is, tot hele moordpartijen aan toe. Het eerste dat bonobos doen wanneer conflicten zich voordoen is interveniëren. Gewoonlijk zijn het vrouwen die dat doen. Hoog geplaatste vrouwen dwarsliggen is iets dat je in een bonobo gemeenschap beter niet kunt wagen. Alle vrouwen werken dan samen om je de mond te snoeren maar doen dat met een variatie aan technieken, waar spel en seks niet in ontbreken. Het is onmogelijk ruzie te blijven maken wanneer je verleid wordt!

In bonobo groepen wordt constant gewerkt aan sociale cohesie, en conflicten lijken vaak juist een extra hulpmiddel of gereedschap om die cohesie te versterken.

De manier waarop veel mensen conflicten aangrijpen om in hun gelijk te gaan zitten maakt juist die interactie die de openingen moet leveren om het conflict op te lossen onmogelijk. Als je jezelf in groepen isoleert waarin je je gelijk krijgt, van gelijkgezinde mopperaars, lever je een bijdrage aan een voedingsbodem voor nieuwe en herhalende en escalerende conflicten.

Er zit niet veel anders op, wanneer we werkelijk op deze planeet met elkaar willen samenleven, meteen actie te ondernemen bij welk conflict dan ook, en partijen met elkaar in contact te brengen. Niet laten sudderen, niet je van elkaar afkeren, niet de ander tot de "vijand" bombarderen, maar erkennen en bevestigen dat we gedeelde behoeftes hebben.

Dit is de Engelse vertaling van De Bonobo Architect.

To successfully implement architecture in an organisation, whether a project or a multinational enterprise, the architects’ character is key. Obviously. We all know the human factor is paramount. Don’t we?

Especially in politically charged organisations (which organisation isn’t?) all kinds of ideas about leadership and effective character attributes abound. To an extent some of these ideas are supported by accumulated knowledge about human biology. Or maybe I should say animal biology.

About our intrinsic human nature all kinds of stories abound as well. Are humans “by nature” egoistic? Is our main priority survival of ourselves, if necessary at the expense of others? Or do we have an inborn awareness of the interest of the whole, and the fact that, for the survival of the group or the species, it is sometimes better to sacrifice individuals, especially our own individuality? Or at least put that individuality second-place?

I do not have the answers to these questions. It is just that I realised that the time-proven story of man as a “hunter’, and the associated statement that “war is eternal” and our base drive is aggression, never really resounded in me. Fortunately there is abundant material to at least consider other hypotheses. Inspired by pioneering work from Marija Gimbutas and many others I was able to visualise a radically different history of humankind. Just as I always felt the general statement that life is governed by the “survival of the fittest” to be a political reflection of the spirit of the time that created that statement, around 1860. This was the period of the civil war in the United States. A period in which Denmark and Germany fought each other, when Austria invaded Germany, Japan was attacked by several countries and Russia fought on its borders. At the same time the emancipation of coloured people and women started, causing the toppling of all kinds of “certainties” for the established order.

Our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, the chimpanzees and the bonobos, may serve as interesting analogies. These creatures mirror aspects of our own nature, relatively outside our human Zeitgeist, although in the case of chimpanzees I have my doubts because this species has been in very close contact with humans lately and seems to undergo fundamental changes. These two great apes mirror aspects of our own nature.

Both species have been researched. Most research has been done on the chimpanzee, because the bonobo has only recently been “discovered” in 1929. Everyone will probably have heard about Jane Goodall who lived for years with several chimpanzee groups. The name most associated with the bonobo, a different great ape that is perhaps even more closely related to humans, is the Dutch primatologist and ethologist Frans van der Waal. The bonobo has impressive mental and cognitive capabilities, about which you can read for example in this article on Kanzi, a bonobo ape with which Frans became intimate friends.

Both species are almost symbolic in their representation of the opposites I sketched earlier:

• Humans as basically driven by aggression, self-survival, sexual male dominance (chimpanzee)
• Or humans as social creatures, prioritising the group and the species over its own survival, female dominance (bonobo)

Especially the research into that remarkable and intriguing great ape, the bonobo, is something I would like to refer to to introduce a style of architecture that can have a healing power in organisation wrestling with their “chimpanzee” nature.

Exactly what are those extraordinary properties of the bonobo?

Maybe I should clarify one thing first. The bonobo is sometimes referred to as the “sexual ape”. Humans observed early on that within bonobo communities sex is constantly used to erase conflicts and release tension. I do not intend to suggest we should do likewise in our companies. Instead I’d like to introduce other characteristics and strategies.

Dealing with conflicts

Bonobo apes have developed a social interaction strategy which is extremely effective in dealing with conflicts. Whenever a larger number of individuals group together you will have conflicts. Bonobos never try to evade or deny conflicts. They are masters in dealing with them, and immediately tackle any conflict heads-on.

There is an experiment, reported by Brian Hare, which challenged both chimpanzees and bonobos. Food was put on a platform that could only be brought within reach by collaborating in the group. Both groups eventually succeeded in obtaining the reward. But the differences were surprising. Bonobos were much faster. They commenced the challenge with play, and the food they obtained was joyfully distributed within the group. The chimps wrestled from the start with their competitive natures, and constantly fought over the food when they finally obtained it.

Brian Hare is also credited with the theory that bonobos have undergone some kind of self-inflicted domestication, comparable to the human domestication of dogs: Tame Theory: Did Bonobos Domesticate Themselves?.

In many respects bonobos seem more civilised than chimpanzees. Or humans. It is not that bonobo communities do not have conflicts. On the contrary, there are constant disagreements, like in any community. But, as Frans de Waal has shown,: there is not one recorded instance of bonobos physically wounding a member of their own species, something which is common with chimpanzees, who even occasionally go on killing sprees. The first thing bonobos do when confronted with a conflict is intervene. Usually the higher placed females take this upon themselves. Antagonising high-ranked females is not something you want to do in a bonobo community! All females will collaborate to stop you, using an extremely wide spectrum of techniques, including play and sex. It is hard to remain angry when you are being seduced!

Bonobo groups are constantly engaged in bonding, strengthening social cohesion, in such a consistent way that it even seems that conflicts are just another tool to enhance the group.

Often humans use conflicts to lock themselves into their opinions on what is right in their minds. This effectively hampers exactly the kind of interaction needed to resolve the conflict. Isolating yourself in self-righteous groups of like-minded supporters is the perfect breeding ground for ever-repeating and escalating conflicts.

If we really want to live together on this planet we have few other options but take action, instantly, with any conflict, and get parties in contact with each other. Do not let the conflict stew, do not turn away and make the counter party into the “enemy”, but acknowledge and confirm that essentially our needs are the same.

Multitasken is te leren - Deze week - intermediair.nl
(Opmerking: link naar artikel bestaat helaas niet meer)

Interessant en dit keer redelijk objectief getoonzet artikel over een veelbesproken onderwerp. Vaak hoor ik van collega's dat moderne kinderen "anders" zouden zijn, dat ze veel meer in staat zouden zijn tot multitasken. Je ziet het beeld voor je van je kind dat zijn huiswerk zit te doen met televisie aan, mp3 speler in één oor, met een computer waarop zes chat sessies draaien en ondertussen een maaltijd verorberend. Het idee is dan dat "normale" mensen hier gek van zouden worden maar kinderen niet want "die kunnen zo goed multitasken".

Een variant is de man-vrouw discussie, waarbij vaak wordt gezegd dat vrouwen veel beter in staat zijn tot multitasken dan een man. Stereotiepe beelden: de man bij het ontbijt opgaand in de krant, en zijn verstoorde reactie op een vraag: "sorry, zei je wat...?". En de vrouw, vier dreinende kinderen, bezig met eten koken, en de telefoon gaat terwijl net een kind valt en zich bezeert...

Multitasken heeft heel erg te maken met het vraagstuk van het "bewustzijn". Zoals in sommige andere artikelen al aangegeven geloof ik niet zo heel erg in dat begrip "bewustzijn", laat staan zijn tegenhanger: "onderbewustzijn". Wat ik zo interessant vind aan deze discussie is dat wij meer en meer beginnen in te zien dat ons denken niet onze identiteit is. Het denken, dat mentale proces van associëren en gedachtentreintjes, is het meest trage aspect van ons bewustzijn. Als we met ons denken een auto zouden moeten besturen zouden we niet sneller dan 1 km/uur kunnen! En in het denken kunnen wij zoeken tot we een ons wegen - enig bewustzijn (bewust zijn) zullen we er nooit in ontdekken!

A hot topic in The Netherlands at the moment is embryo selection. This is the use of a technology to detect "genetic defects" in embryos in a very early stage of development. This could then lead to destroying those "defect" embryos before implanting.

The discussion has escalated to the political arena, because the state secretary responsible for legislation in public health, Bussemaker, has made some peculiar moves in the past few weeks: first she accepted the use of this technology, especially for the detection of genetic characteristics that could lead to breast cancer, then she withdrew that.
One Dutch hospital has already announced they would continue with the practice in spite of the withdrawn legislation, because they "take their responsibility toward the unborn child". Another hospital has announced they would use this technology for embryos especially suspect of serious other genetic defects (other than breast cancer that is).

The discussion is especially interesting, because it reveals many psychological traits in modern society, with severe implications in philosophical and ethical areas.

So it seems we are more and more able to detect genetic deficiencies.

First: I challenge the scientific foundation of that claim. True, we know some genetic correlations with diseases like breast cancer and cystic fibrosis. These correlations are, I wager, purely statistical. But I also have serious doubts whether the correlation is valid in the other direction: does the presence of these signatures lead to these diseases? The human genome, or any genome for that matter, is such a complex thing in itself, that making any statement implying we "understand" anything about it is grossly misleading, and certainly not scientifically sound.

Second: the technology is applied in a very early stage of embryo development. Specifically, one cell is removed from the embryo at a stage where the embryo has only eight cells. This is anathema to me, but another aspect of biology we know so little about is simply shoveled under the carpet. What do we know about the early development of the embryo, and the effects in the person, both mentally and physically? Almost nothing. There is a plethora of publications in the several areas that at least hint at such effects.

1. Piaget's theory of cognitive development
2. Kohlberg's stages of moral development
3. Maslow's hierarchy of needs
4. Erikson's stages of psychosocial development
5. Jane Loevinger's stages of ego development
6. Lietaert Peerbolte - His exceptional book called Psychocybernetics.

Third: there is a very interesting association with "suffering". The medical discipline is supposed to be a discipline based on science, with the express purpose of treating human beings to alleviate "suffering". Usually associated with the physical body, it sometimes feels like doctors assume the role of the creator, with godlike powers like the power to heal.

We had a wise village doctor who used to say: "I cannot cure you, you have to do that yourself. I only hope to provide some help."

What do we know about suffering? Who are we to decide that a person born and living with a genetic defect, is "suffering" in an "unacceptable" way? What about persons who are living now, adults with defects? Should they "never have been born"? Of course this is not what is meant. Or is it? I am not sure. We have become so afraid of the body, of our physical existence, that we are waging a war against its unpredictability, its irrationality. While those traits are the very roots of life and complex systems of which our bodies (and minds!) are an inseparable part.

The entire discussion, as could be expected of one played out in the political arena, is a gross simplification of an issue of such depth.