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Justin Wilford, PhD's avatar

This is a pithy banger of a piece. Really appreciate it as it helps me think through the biological underpinning of Internal Family Systems.

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grant's avatar

It also seems important to recognize that unreliability or conflict within systems can be goods in themselves, not just ways of providing fault tolerance or adaptability. The example of subunits acting against the goals of the larger system can be destructive, as in cancer, but it can also be transformative. Sometimes misaligned actions are actually better actions. I’m thinking of conversion moments: a self-described selfish person experiencing an unpremeditated act of kindness. The larger organism’s goal (selfishness) is disrupted by the smaller unit’s behavior (kindness), but that misalignment creates the possibility of reflection and a new cohesion built on deeper values.

In fact, I think all moments of creativity, insight, grace, novelty, revelation, and transformation depend on something being introduced into the larger system that was not there before—something the system itself could not predict or control. At the limit, all learning, growth, and creativity require a new, “unpredictable” attitude arising to the larger system. If the world were entirely mechanized, predictable, and controllable, then there could be no more of those good things: no insight, no grace, no transformation, etc

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