## Resilient Koan 10 - Satisfying and Satisficing ### Koan: "How can one gain satisfaction from doing something that is merely satisficing?" ### _Discussion_: We were reflecting on how when people look for a solution to a deficiency, the temptation is to avoid the deeper question that causes the lack. When we find the source problem can't be avoided forever and is difficult, we seek the resolution that suffices denying the need for the ongoing harder inquiry. We look for satisfaction and instead we engage in satisficing. Are humans happiness seeking or seeking to simply cope, choosing what suffices? Depending on the answer, how does that inform our questions regarding sustainability and the reasons for engaging in that inquiry? ### _Inquiry_: The concept of satisficing is specifcally looked at by Evan Thompson in _Mind in Life_, extending on Herbert Simon's term and the role of organisms in applying a coarse filter to the environment to look for 'fitness measures in incommensurable dimensions'. The structural coupling of an organism with their environment and their history of networks means rather than growth through self-organisation being limited by natural selection, evolution is a 'stopping process' of selection from potential environments of meaning. Rather than deciding what suffices, we decide what satisfies on individual dimensions of 'good enough' and filter out the remainder based, not on an optimal choice, but what reinforces the well-being of the organism as a whole as it has been. ### _Insight_: That rather than what suffices, do what is simply sufficient. Apithological growth is that which is generative and restrained based on the natural capacities and potentials presently existing in the conditions of the times occurring. Any other form of innovation or change generates, in remote times, dysfunction and eventually limitations. To protect that future potential requires clear seeing now. ### _Resolution_: The middle way between Desire (Divine Dissatisfaction) and Wanting (Dissatisfied Sufficing) is Sufficiency. ### _Practice_: To examine the person (organisation, community, city) as a whole and see what is sufficient to reinforce and support their extended self-sense for the future health of that entity as it is, and as it will become. --- 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.