Of triangles, two by two squares, and ladders...

Warning: I have extreme anti-affinity towards these...

Mar 3, 2021

The world of business thrives on models. And there are three predominant patterns that drive these models - triangles, two by two management squares, and ladder-based step-wise change programs.

Credit: Jacob’s ladder quilt block with triangles, squares, and ladders Source: https://www.generations-quilt-patterns.com/jacobs-ladder-quilt.html

Thanks to the magic of Amazon’s Prime One-day shipping, I got the book Deb Dana’s “Polyvagal Flip Chart” delivered to me this afternoon and I completed the reading as it was a very quick read. It certainly added some new perspectives to my vocabulary. As feared (per my biases) it was a step-change ladder program with three major stages (steps) of the newest evolutionary, sympathetic response, and evolutionary circuit as the three states of the continuum of responses. Or perhaps I am just learning peripherally yet…

While it might have some utility in therapy, I have limited utility from it as I responded yesterday about my belief in psychology is limited to modeling humans as per the Murray Gell-man quote when he famously said that “the only valid model of the human system is the system itself” - so filed and moving on. I might come back to this when it adds some utility to my modeling, in some context.

From a creativity standpoint, humans are creative irrespective of the state of their autonomic nervous system. In fact, I would argue that the opposite might be true - if you are in too much of a state of safety you have less reason to be creative. If you look at the history of creativity - some of the best work in science and the arts have been created from madness and pain. And some of the best innovations have been created when people have been cornered into situations where they had to be creative to get out of. Exaptation happens from fight or flight - and supposedly the dinosaurs flew - when they were in flight (running away) and forced into the flight (flying) by repurposing feathers that were developed for warmth before they found a new use for it in a survival context.

Credit: Livescience.com https://www.livescience.com/39688-exaptation.html

So, I am going to stick to my theory, for now. And see where this takes me…