## Resilient Koan 05 - Models and Modes The question this week was: ### Koan: "How can we use a model effectively, but not egoically, to disclose and engage with the world?" ### Context: I am reading Ahl and Allen on the structuring of holarchical ecologies and the role of the observer in scientific observation, and its seems pretty clear that we do what Feyerabend suggested, being that theory and observation go hand in hand. We approach the world with a theory and in surprise find that it was not what was expected. An open system of mind then reframes and reforms the model, slightly, and occasionally dramatically, to go look again. This generative process of learning (my core assumption of how people are) is my model of the world. So my model holds models as systems of conscious construction, not forms of constriction. ### Insight: The humour is - in the reason why I don't  see why people have to use their heuristic models as a way of confining and constraining reality, recasting all that is seen into the frame used, instead of using that frame as a means to disclose unknowing and unlearning. This is, of course, because it doesn't fit into my model of a constructivist learning ontology!  I don't see it, because its not in my model of how things are. My own frame constrains. The better perspective is that our psyches, our meaning making systems, are much less robust (less resilient) than I would believe. They need to be treated with the upmost respect and care. They are the way they are, because they need to be that way. For integrity. Whether it is Integral Theory, Natural Step or Adaptive Cycles in Panarchy - people will use these frames to disclose great diversity, novelty and discovery - and also in service of the oppression of expressions in creation of new orthodoxy. The reason for this - is because, that is how we are. The models themselves are value neutral. ### Reflection: The more I assume something is, the less chance I have to see it. Open into unknowing - continuously. ### Practice: The resolution to the Koan is to model holding each model, lightly - while also being ready to let it go completely. As one would a Tai Chi stance. It is perhaps the entering stance, the initial posture taken, that allows the 108 forms to occur. Or is it the bow? \_II\_ Without these preliminary forms, the set of movements would be a form - where instead they are an expression of life in the continuous action, of formation. --- This is one in a series of 25 'Resilient Koans' documenting "an apithologue into the koans of practice discovered while creating resilient sustainable communities", in 2010.