Synthesis as the Syllapsis of Relationships

The Center of Synthesis is a Relationship between, with, and beyond at the same time together and apart. This is the nature of the world, of time and space, and our lives as persons.

When I began this Substack series on Synthetic/Synthesis, I had no idea where it would take me. The words seemed to me representative of what needs to take place in our lives in the future.

I have not written much on actual synthesis or even identified what a new understanding of the Synthetic would be in the future. Yet, this is how we discover new things in life. We begin with a thought, unclear, unformed, and yet compelling.

We hear of a place. It isn’t that far off. But until today, we’ve never heard of it or been there. So, we travel out of our way to see it, to gain our own perspective of it. We get to arrive. We don’t find what we expected. We find something that requires us to step back and ask questions. That is where I am right now

For today, I begin with a quote by Neils Bohr that Iain McGilchrist used at the beginning of the second volume of The Matter With Things.

“In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience.”

I am writing this series because I have had this notion for a long time that relationships are the organizing principle of life. The connections that we have. The space in-between. The changes over time. All are aspects of the nature of relationships. Yet, not everyone sees it this way.

To deny reality is to deny relationships. Without relationships, we have isolation and anonymity. With relationships comes interaction, accountability, and impact.

I am primarily referring to human relationships. Yet, I see those relations as a subset of the larger relationship that we have with the natural world. It is a world of beauty, wonder, and immensity. Not the dry, politically combustible relation of climate change. Nature is a transcendent reality that exists beyond a mechanistic reality. We are both part of it and by our human agency also separate from it.

The historical progression at the heart of this relationship factors into how we understand ourselves in the context of the world. This transition has gone from the culture of transcendent materialism to that of immanent materialism to today’s immanent non-materiality. To have a relationship with something or a being that is not material and of this world is to embrace a simulated reality. I have described this simulacrum of the world as The Spectacle of the Real.

This spectacle invites us into the mosh pit at the edge of the stage of a Dua Lipa concert. It presents an exhilarating experience of being present at every day’s historic moments. Yet, we stand apart from these experiences. If you are watching the video of the concert, you are not present. With all media, even this Substack, we are not in a relationship with the newsreaders, the movie stars, the musical performers, or the politicians that live by the spectacle. You can have a relationship with me. It best begins in the conversations that happen in the comments.

The simulated world conjures up a source of ego gratification, wealth, and power. We stand transfixed by the performance of the actors in their simulation of reality. Yet, what they cannot escape from is reality. The impact of their performance shows up.

It is like I have said many times.

If all the leadership training, coaching, consulting, keynote presentations, and books written are of such a high level of excellence, why is our world suffering pandemics, lockdowns, inflation, war, corruption, and fraud at the highest levels of government and business?

Answer that question and you have become situationally aware of the difference between the simulation and reality

The reason is that the simulation is not an invitation to a better world. It is a distraction from what is really going on. All that effort to develop leadership is operating within the institutional structures of the simulation. If you need an example, watch The Matrix.

The Syllapsies of Relating

Iain McGilchrist, in Chapter 20, The Coincidentia Oppositorium, of The Matter With Things, presents the insights of classical Greek thinker Heraclitus, who is remembered most generally for having said two things worth remembering.

“You can’t step in the same river twice.”

“The only thing permanent is change.”

McGilchrist points to a deeper insight of Heraclitus that is relevant to how we relate to people and the world.

“In one of his most penetrating observations, Heraclitus notes:

They do not understand how a thing agrees at variance with itself: it is an attunement turning back on itself, like that of the bow and the lyre.

It is the tension between the warring ends of the bow that gives the arrow the power to fly as it is the tension in the strings of the lyre that gives rise to melody: this is what he meant by saying ‘war is the father of all things.’ What looks like a waste of effort - pulling in opposite directions - is the essence of generative vitality. The word translated here as attunement is harmonie. Harmony is, after all, the reconciliation of things that contend with one another. According to Charles Kahn … the world brings together three main ideas - the fitting together of surfaces that are ‘true’; the reconciling of warring parties; and the accord of musical strings. Whatever is, therefore, brings together elements that are made to fit, and in a manner that is fitting; draws peace out of conflict; and gives birth to beauty out of this reconciliation.

Another fragment is equally pregnant, and of even greater density:

Graspings: wholes and not wholes, convergent divergent, consonant dissonant, from all things one and from one thing all.”

The nature of nature, of relationships, and of ourselves as human beings is that we are always set in opposition to the world. It is what challenges us to grow, the master skills that enable us to advance in life.

It is why communication is hard. What is going on in my head is not going on in the other person’s head. The tension that exists is real. It is the number one problem that I have found in organizations. It is not just a tension between me and them, but between the different parts of me.

I go into a wood shop. I see wood planks and equipment throughout the room. It stands in opposition to me. The wood challenges me to do more than create saw dust. The fashioning of wood into a table is no simple matter. The design, the cuts, the alignment, and the piecing together do not come together easily. It is a reality that reveals my own knowledge and character. I practice working with the implements and the wood enough, and we become collaborators in creating objects of beauty. The wood fits together in a harmonious and beautiful way that now has a utility that the wood never would have had lying in a stack in the corner of the shop.

When I think of relationships, I think of people having to cross a boundary of understanding because the other person is another person. We are not the same. We are each individuals. At the same time, we are constantly trying to imitate the other person.

This tension between us René Girard calls the mimetic conflict. The tension is that I desire what you desire. I want what you want. You can see it in the faces of the audience in the Dua Lipa Levitating video. You’ll see young men and women desiring to be like this talented performer. Their desire is so strong it becomes a kind of worship of her. Girard would see this as an external mimetic desire. External because there is no relationship.

Let’s go on stage. Dua Lipa is a great performer, but not really a great singer or dancer. She creates an atmosphere of desire. The crowd wants to be connected. They can only be from a distance. Now watch her perform her Cold Heart song, a collaboration with Elton John. Dua Lipa sits down on a platform with the other dancers surrounding her. She is now one with them. Their mimetic temptation is internal because they do have a relationship with the one who they seek to imitate. The sense of familiarity, rather than separateness, suggests that they can be just like her. Yet, they are separate. This is the Yin and Yang of relationships in the simulation, as well as in reality.

This moment on stage is the simulation of a relationship. It is not a real relationship. The audience and the dancers are connected to her by their desire to be with her, to be like her, and to feel what she feels when she is on stage.

This experience is what McGilchrist points toward in quoting Heraclitus on graspings. He explains.

“The Greek word syllapsies - here translated ‘graspings’ - seems … to suggest … something ‘grasped’… something that brings elements together; … a deep understanding of the nature of reality comes in glimpses, or graspings - moments of insight; that, in that insight, all is neither simply single, nor simply manifold, neither simply whole, nor simply not whole, neither simply like nor simply unlike, each working with, and by the same token working against, the others; that the One and the Many bring one another forth into being, together generating the reality that has this structure at its core … all is held together in a syllapsis … a moment of dawning insight in us.”

In our relationships, the difference between us requires us, as the Diana Ross song goes, Reach out and touch Somebody's hand Make this world a better place If you can. Our relationships don’t function automatically. They require work because there is always a comparison happening between us. We grasp one another in curiosity and intention. Not to control or dominate, but to learn and grow together and individually.

Plutarch captures this insight of Heraclitus.

“According to Heraclitus one cannot step twiceinto the same river nor can one grasp any mortal substance in a stable condition, but by the intensity and rapidity of change it scatters and again gathers. Or rather, not again nor later but at the same time it forms and dissolves and approaches and departs.”

Within the context of relationships, we have two ideas that can help us discover what reality is like. The first is that there is a kind of two sides to a coin. A positive and a negative. They are both similar and not similar. Is this not how our human relationships are? We both understand the other and also see them as a mystery. This pairing of oppositions gives life an edge that helps us make distinctions.

The second idea is that change is not linear or in one direction. It is stop-and-go, step forward and back, advance and retreat, add and subtract, divide and multiply, and each time we change, the context that we are in changes. It really is like a stream that we can never step in twice. If this is so, then our task is to constantly bring the variations of experience together into a whole.

The impact of the synthesis of oppositions and the flow of time is that we discover how to live in the real world. The simulated world does not have this same character of change and opposition. It is not synthetic, but binary. As a result, the simulation is not an opening up of the world, but rather its opposition, a narrowing of it. This means then that there may be a purpose to a simulation of reality. But, it needs to be found in the synthesis with reality.

When we synthesize our relationships with one another and the world, we are synthesizing all the aspects of our lives. We bring together what we know with what we discover, uncover and stumble on. We live in the creative tension between ideas, objects, and society.

In the end, the challenge is not only to synthesize but to find the ground for opposites to synthesize together.