Social Aspects: Connect-the-Dots

Distributed processes are all about connecting the dots. If you'll remember back to first grade or kindergarten (or earlier), opening one of those new coloring books with a rough newspaper sort of paper, smelling the paper and ink, and tracing the connections between dots to form an image, you understand what I mean.

The dots being separate is the "distributed" part and the process of connecting them is the "process" part: distributed processes. When we do this psychologically, essentially, we pull a few dots together to form some shape that we can see as a whole or Gestalt. This happens when brainstorming (more distributed) moves towards applications (more cohesively formed). When something forms up quickly and/or decisively, we experience what we call "insight". (It is possible to feel hints or flickers of insight and also something more akin to "being hit in the head with a hammer it was so obvious once I saw it--wow!".)

This overarching process of making things form shapes or wholes is part of how we create meaning. Each whole can connect with other wholes, in which case they are also parts (which Ken Wilber likes to call holons to signify that they are wholes on their own but also parts when seen in context). In a positive tone, we say that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and in a negative tone, we talk about getting lost in a crowd should the wholeness/individuality of parts gets lost in their part-ness ("you're just a number like everyone else").

Distributed processing is a big part of how we construct a self-identity, how we know ourselves as individuals (wholes). Since we learn about ourselves in a physical and social context, we come to know ourselves as parts or relational wholes (wholes-as-parts/holons). This essay breaks down a few of the phisycal-social "collections" that we draw from in constructing our self-identities. We can consider all of what is going on around and in us to make up our associational matrices.

Each preceding paragraph is an individual point that I want to now draw together to form into a single, cohesive shape. I will "connect the dots" by drawing lines between these points. Hopefully, as I move forward with my narrative thread, there will be the feeling in my readers that things are "coming together". There may be a somewhat vague sense of my purpose early on, but that should solidify as we go. So this exchange between us is an example of a distributed process, an example of how the "stuff" in my psyche interacts with my social milieu. You may get the sense that everything that is said here has been said in different ways before, but hopefully, this way/moment/post will also seem unique in itself. If each paragraph connects, then the post makes a Gestalt or whole.

Depending on my genetic endowment, family of origin, local neighborhood, education, regional cultures, exposure to diversity, nation, and generational cohort, I will be more or less likely to refer to different things. Shamans say that their bodies are the universe. In other words, our nervous systems "re-present" or filter the universe of physical stuff through our sensations. Sensations are filtered through and organized by perceptions, thoughts, and habits. Perceptions, thoughts and habits are shaped by our physical and social environment. Most of us can agree on what a physical environment is, and I believe it can be helpful to talk about the four collections that add up to put together the associational matrices we draw from in feeling motivated and making decisions.

If I am not taught or do not learn how to see and value certain "shapes" or forms, then I won't know how to understand what someone else means if they use those forms. This happens obviously with words (if someone else uses words I don't know), but it also happens with ideas. Furthermore, it happens with perceptual experiences. For example, shamans are familiar with drawing on perceptual experiences that other folks generally are not. Of course they are, because they KNOW that their bodies are the universe. It is true for everyone that our bodies represent the universe, but shamans know this, and that can make a great deal of difference.