In the last article we briefly explored the relationship between stress, care. and connectivity. To achieve this, we drew in part from Doctor et al (2022). Doctor et al (2022) defined self-organizing life from the cellular to the cosmological as being significantly driven by care.
As the paper observes, Doctor et al (2022) posit that a self-organizing organism cares about its survival. The organism then seeks to reduce stress, by narrowing the distance between its current state and the basic requirements for survival. Once these basic requitements have been met, the organism seeks to reduce surprise by anticipating future stressors and organizing to ensure that these potential stressors are minimized (ibid).
One method available for an organism to reduce stress and minimize surprise is to join with other organisms. This is essentially what a human being is, a society of cells working together in sophisticated ways, with increasingly complex objects of care (Whitehead, 1929, Doctor et al, 2022, Thompson, 2014). As human beings we can apply cognition to locate objects of care which are important to us, reduce stress by reducing the distance between our goal state and our current state, and then seek to reduce surprise (achieve a degree of sustainability).
Organisms can offload stress between cells. As Doctor et al (2022) observe, gap junctions within cells allow memory to be shared which cannot be discerned from the source. The memory of one cell can be shared with another, the receiving cell will experience that memory as though it were its own and act. This allows cells to scale up their efforts in moving towards goals and sharing stress across a network, acting as one coherent society.
From this perspective, it is possible to visualize how societies of cells within societies of cells become internal organs within a mammal. Stress is shared across a society and avoids the fatiguing of a single solitary cell. Societies enable stress to be shared, and through novel specialization clusters of cells can form into societies which take on different roles. Staying with the internal organ example, this could be the liver and the pancreas. Both exist to reduce stress by working as a collective with specialized parts which communicate with the whole. The goal is survival, this is something all organisms fundamentally care about.
At the level of a thinking human being, we collectively do the same. We work with people on common sources of care which extend far beyond simple survival. Care identifies our goals, and we seek to reduce stress by moving towards our goals. To create stability, we develop interactive routines and rituals designed to reduce surprise and importantly, share memory so we can act as one.
Societies of people (our modern organizations for example) fall apart when groups decide to go it alone, define different objects of care, and then start working towards goals which may undermine the goals of the broader organization.
This has impacts at all levels of human experience. As Han (2020) observes, when our rituals decline, we function as individuals, not as societies who care about similar things. In these conditions, an individual cannot share its stress, and as result becomes fatigued, depressed, and anxious. The holistic outcome is that societies fall apart.
Developing methods which allow us to work towards common objects of care, reduce stress by pursuing goals and establishing routines which help in the reduction of surprise is essential to progress and health. This allows us to work at the level of what Whitehead calls-living well (Whitehead, 1929) however, sometimes the external world changes and sometimes we think about living better in service of what we care about. Living better requires imagination, a break from the routines which keep us living well.
Naturally, this requires a change, to imagine a future, a different way of pursuing goals and actualizing it. This opens a degree of uncertainty, and consequently, we encounter higher degrees of stress as a new field has opened, and goals associated with objects of care may shift. Surprise is more likely. This places societies of cells in a paradox—living better may have an appeal, a better adaption to the environment, but it also means greater degrees of stress and surprise.
This is where the innovation paradox opens. A chance to live better can contrast sharply with the primary goals of the organism, to reduce stress and reduce surprise. Suddenly, there is greater risk, and the potential for loss. There is always the possibility that some cells within the society may pursue the innovation and others not, this could lead to the collapse of the society. At the level of internal organs, this could be catastrophic as groups of cells decide to go it alone and pursue a path contrary to the requirements of the whole. This is a lack of integration about the objects of care and how to pursue them.
As thinking human beings, we are always curious and compelled to try and live better, and often find ourselves thwarted by this paradox. We can imagine better but think the actualization of better may place us in too much risk.
Reading
Doctor, T.; Witkowski, O.;Solomonova, E.; Duane, B.; Levin, M. (2022) Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence. Entropy 24, 710.
Whitehead, N. (1929) Process and Reality. Simon and Schuster
B.C. Han (2020) The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present. Polity.
Thompson, E (2014) Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Harvard University Press.
