Water!

Renaissance Humans, #53

I’ve been thinking a lot about water lately.

Not men thinking about the Roman Empire levels, but close.

Acolytes at the Altar of Poseidon

I recently read an advance draft of Cliff Kimber’s Born to Flow, and it brought water to the front of my consciousness. It was an excellent read, and I can’t wait to see it in print.

During SEAL training, trainees warn one another of approaching waves by yelling “water!” If you’re caught off guard by a wave, you risk serious injury. This is of particular importance during the night rock portage evolution, held in front of the Hotel Del Coronado¹.

At the human level, hydrating our bodies with water is critical to our health. Our brains—the platform of consciousness, are approximately 75% water. Our bodies are about 60% water, but this declines as we age, to around 50%. Interesting. We get rigid when our bodies become less water filled.

At the planetary level, earth is located in the Goldilocks zone—the range from a star where water can persist in liquid form (0.99 to 1.7 Astronomical Units). The planet’s surface is roughly 71% covered with water, courtesy of our position in the Goldilocks zone.

As Above, So Below, as Taylor Swift used to say.²

Bruce Lee advises us to be like water, to embody Wu Wei— a fundamental part of Taoism that translates to non-action or effortless action. It does not mean doing nothing, but rather acting in harmony with the natural flow of the universe. It emphasizes spontaneity, adaptability, and allowing things to unfold organically (Right Hemisphere) instead of imposing excessive control (Left Hemisphere). A common analogy is water flowing around obstacles rather than trying to push through them.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

The Kawa model is a Japanese occupational therapy framework that uses flowing water to describe a human life. Per Wikipedia:

The river represents the dynamic and ever-changing nature of life; it incorporates five main elements: water, river banks and space, rocks, and driftwood. In the model, "water (mizu) represents life flow and health, driftwood (ryuboku) represents personal assets and liabilities, rocks (iwa) represent life circumstances and problems, and the river walls (torimaki) represent physical and social environmental factors."The model emphasizes that each person's river is unique and influenced by cultural, social, and personal factors.

Source: Significa liberdade - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152488565

The Tao Te Ching emphasizes the importance of water in several chapters:

The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao. (ch 8)

“Nothing in the world is softer and weaker than water. Yet, to attack the hard and strong, nothing surpasses it. Nothing can take its place. (ch 78)

Water is a purifying element for many faith traditions of the world, including Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.

A Greek pre-Socratic, Thales of Miletus believed water was the fundamental principle of all things. He proposed everything in the universe originates from and ultimately depends on water. Thales' based this assertion the necessity of water for organic life, its ability to change states (solid, liquid, gas), and its pervasiveness in the world. Another notable pre-Socratic, Heraclitus, emphasized the ever-changing nature of reality. He purported said panta rhei— "everything flows" or "all is in flux.”³

In the last few years, internationally renowned curmudgeon Dave Snowden developed a tool called Estuarine Mapping to make sense of a given environment. The name refers to an estuary, the liminal space at the opening of a river into a larger body of water. From the Cynefin wiki page:

Estuarine framework specifically refers to the energy/time grid and encompasses the elements that are mapped onto it. It is based on the idea of an estuary (but not a delta), with the metaphor emphasizing the complex and multiple flows of possibility in the system; In an estuary the water flows in and flows out, so there might be things you can do only at the turn of the tide. Some elements might be stable, like a granite cliff, which only need to be checked rarely, while others, like sandbanks, could shift daily. As the water flows in and out, some elements might be covered or visible. Alternative metaphors illustrating similar dynamic and non-linear processes may be used, especially in environments where there is no familiarity with estuaries.

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Water, Water, Everywhere

There are an infinite number of ways to frame things. To put a scaffolding on what can seem overwhelming.

One way is as a continuum of domains.

We can locate simple on one end and chaotic on the other. But the perception of what is simple and what is chaos is going to differ from person to person. To the average human in this WEIRD world, a physical altercation represents total chaos. But to a trained Martial Artist, such an event would not be chaotic, but complex— distance management, power generation, angles, and a composed psychological state. So the perspective of the individual matters in addition to the composition of the environment.

We can use water to make sense of this continuum.

I like to think about Order as Ice, Chaos as Steam, and Complexity as Water. I break the following chart down in detail here, but I will summarize below.

Dynamical Systems (A human society, or an ecosystem) oscillate between states of order, chaos, and complexity, depending on a host of variables.

One end of the continuum can be likened to ice—stasis, order, tyranny. This is where processes can be reliably scaled. We should be primarily scientists in this domain, taking things apart and optimizing them. It’s fashionable today to throw shade at Frederick Winslow Taylor, that efficiency optimizer of the industrial age. But there is a time and place for his methods — just not most of the time, particularly when navigating the messy dynamics of human relationships. Although order can be beneficial, too much order hinders innovation and stifles diversity. Ways of knowing here are Propositional and Procedural.⁴ On this end are simple and complicated problems, following a baking recipe or working on a car engine.

The other end is the chaos of steam — capricious, wild, and anarchic. We should be primarily artists in this domain, riding the VUCA or BANI currents (VUCA — Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous. BANI — Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible). Examples of this domain include kayaking class V rapids or crisis management. There is much more Embodied Cognition in this domain.⁵ You have to just send it, get sendy, full send into the wild.

In the middle, where Goldilocks’ porridge is just right, lies the complexity of water. This is where most of life is, where conditions allow for new things and ways of being to emerge. Here lies craftsmanship, the nexus point between scientist (specializing in ordered domains) and artist (frolicking in the chaos of creativity). Design thinking lives here.

In this domain, we can question foundational assumptions—something that doesn’t always happen in an ordered domain because of stifling conditions, or in a chaotic domain because of time constraints.

Diversity and variety are necessary for the health of all organisms— so pockets and periods of order and chaos are good for the overall system. But complexity is where things need to live, if they want to persist in time. We have to be like water—not steam, not ice. Find the Goldilocks zone, because the alternatives offer an incomplete picture of reality.

Understand where you are on the playing field. Sometimes you’re on the ice, occasionally you’re in the steam, but most of the time, especially if humans are involved, you’re immersed in water. If so, be fluid in your approach, flowing your way to a posture matched to local conditions.

Be like water.

Currere Certamen Tuum — Run Your Race

1. This is one of my favorite juxtapositions of the BUD/S— brutal training, right in front of an elegant and historic national landmark.

2. Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Notable phrase in The Kybalion.

3. But to be clear, possibly Taylor Swift.

4. The 4 P’s of Knowing framework are: Propositional: Expressed as statements and deals with factual information and declarative knowledge. Columbus came to America in 1492. Procedural: Expressed through skills, abilities, and actions. It is knowledge of how to do something, often acquired through practice and experience. How to change a car tire. Perspectival: Shaped by one's subjective experience and perspective—involves understanding and appreciating different viewpoints, beliefs, and cultural contexts. What it’s like to be a parent. Participatory: Knowledge gained through active engagement and participation, emphasizing the importance of embodied, experiential, and interactive learning. Salsa or Ballroom dancing with a partner or group.

5. 4E Cognition is a cognitive science framework that challenges traditional views of cognition as being solely confined to the brain. The 4E’s are Embodied: Emphasizes the role of the body and its interactions with the environment in shaping cognitive processes. Doing Yoga or playing basketball. Embedded:Highlights the idea that cognitive processes are not isolated within the individual, but are instead embedded in and influenced by the surrounding environment and social context. The instrument panel of an automobile, using the internet. Enacted Cognition: Emphasizes the active and dynamic nature of cognition, made up of ongoing interactions between the individual and the environment. A crowd of stock markets traders buying and selling, the interplay between a student, teacher, and academic subject. Extended: Expands the boundaries of cognition beyond the individual and incorporates external tools, artifacts, and resources as integral parts of cognitive processes. The use of a calculator or a smartphone. or my personal favorite, creating your own commonplace notebook of curated wisdom. Vervaeke adds two more: Emotional: The valence our mind assigns to a given stimulus will color the processing which comes after. The pre-snap “read” a football quarterback gets when observing the formation of the other team. Exapted: Repurposing an existing cognitive pathway or process for a novel, evolutionarily helpful action. The evolution of wings in birds, or the development of vocal speech in humans are two examples of exaptation.