Synthesis in Time and Space

Synthesis in the Life of the Self

Synthesis in Transition

Over the past decade, I have made the claim that we are at a transition point in human history. I see it as an epochal change out of where we have been and into a new era. By epochal, I don’t mean a change within the current culture and structure of the world, but out of it into something new, more whole, and categorically different from before.

Much like the transition from the Medieval world to the age of the Enlightenment which gave us the cultures of science and industry that we call the Modern Age, this next age is yet unknown and undefined. It is pointed to as if it is over the next hill on the trail we are walking on. I am reasonably certain that this new era will not be just around the corner. It won’t be simply derived from what we now know. It will instead emerge from deep self-evaluation with the repair and restoration of society as a network of relationships. As one of my colleagues described to me, these networks will be centered on reconciliation through our shared initiatives to discover that which is unknown.

We are transitioning into a new understanding of humanity and society. I agree with Dr. Iain McGilchrist from his great book, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Understanding of the Word where he quotes Henri Bergson -

It cannot be too often repeated: from intuition one can pass on to analysis, but not from analysis to intuition.

This may be what this unknown future looks like.

We are unaware of what awaits us. If we step forward with a discovery mindset, we see a future that is hopeful. We can’t see the inherent problems and discontinuities that will emerge over time, as a new epoch emerges. It is like leaving on a journey with only a vague notion of your final destination. It is a journey for the traveler with curiosity, openness, and the desire to discover that which is unknown.

I first saw this fifty years ago as a university student. I had this intuition that we are at the beginning of something new. I did not understand then what I do now. In order to transition to this new epoch would require the dismantling of the beliefs and structures of the current world. The reconciliation that my friend suggested to me is how we make peace with that which travels with us into the future, and that which we leave behind.

Two Observations

The growing specialization of fields of knowledge and expertise has curtailed the connectedness of knowledge. As knowledge has grown, it has become trapped in the silos of specialization. The connective linkages that we need to advance into a new era of discovery are missing. They can be recovered and reconciled to who we are and can be in the future.

My other observation is a concentration of knowledge into narrower and more arcane fields of expertise has occurred. This development creates an environment for a mimetic rivalry between disciplines. Instead of the convergence of knowledge, I find it fragmenting.

My university training was in a multidisciplinary program in American Studies. We sought to develop an expansive understanding of America. We saw the connections between history, literature, philosophy, religion, sociology, economics, and the arts. The reality is that we never finished forming that expansive vision. As you may well guess, this approach was unique and not replicated in other disciplines

Academic programs now internalize knowledge as defining who we are. In this sense, the modern self has become a miniaturized, marginalized version of what would have been a half-century ago. The self has become its own place or country. Instead of discovering the self in the context of the world out there, we have turned inward to define the self. I described this elsewhere as “we have moved from the self in the world to the world in the self.”

The internalization of the self’s understanding of the world makes some sense as the world is full of threats. After all, we live in a time of COVID, economic contraction, growing crime and violence in our cities, and devastation from natural disasters. However, it doesn’t make sense if the survival of our communities is dependent upon individual acts of caring. Do we see the world we live in essentially as a virtual one, a type of simulation, or is it a place where my relationship with my community truly matters? Creating a synthesis of the two will help us better make this transition.

The Synthesized Self

Our sense of self is not simply what we feel about ourselves. It is also not simply what I do in the world. It isn’t simply what I buy or who I vote for or what teams I follow. It isn’t simply my attitude or perspective. It isn’t simply what I know and what I do well. It is all those things, and more, mashed together in the contexts of our lives.

Our self-definition is not simply a set of propositions, psychological inventory scores, ancestral history, or position/title in an organization. We are more than all these things.

However, I have found that once a synthesis begins to form our core essence can be discovered. I don’t want to define it more specifically than that. There is something about ourselves that transcends time and space. We are more than the person who is present in the moment. We are more than a biologically specific entity. Our human person is a rich interplay of factors that is greater than the sum of its parts.

As human beings, we move between social and work contexts. Our true self, a way to describe this essence, shows up in time and space. As time unfolds, and space takes many different shapes, we adapt to the transitions that are constant. This means that we are not one thing, like some mechanical instrument. Rather, we are a constantly evolving being, adapting to the openness of the world outside our bodies. As of the Five Guiding Principles of the Circle of Impact states, “We are ALL in Transition. Every one of us. ALL the time.” From this perspective, I am convinced that this idea of a Synthetic self ultimately means that our potential for making a difference in the world is unlimited.

The interior and exterior of our lives need to be synthesized to truly represent the wholeness of who we are. Even when this essence of who we are shows itself, it is not some fixed object that we can take into our hand and show it around. It is alive, living within us, allowing us to adapt to situations in gentle, congenial, and inviting ways.

Even if there is a level of inscrutable unknowableness about our lives, we can always access it by asking questions. My Five Questions That Everyone Must Ask began to appear in my work two decades ago. I found that asking these questions gained clarity. Not just clarity of who we are, but what our lives have meant in the past, and can mean in the future.

If your sense of self is all interior, you may lack external reference points for understanding your place in the real world. If your sense of self is all exterior, you may lack the emotional resonance that is needed to know what truly matters to you. In both scenarios, we are not whole, but partial selves, easily manipulated and seduced toward perspectives and practices that are not healthy for us.

The Freedom To Improvise

To find some synthesis between these various aspects of ourselves is not the end goal. The Synthetic is not static. It is an ongoing, dynamic, organic process. Musicians call it improvisation. Here’s the great vibraphonist Gary Burton explaining improvisation.

His comparison of musical improvisation to telling a story is insightful. Let’s take it a step further to see how our synthesizing our inner and outer life can be understood as a kind of improvisation of life.

Burton uses three forms of music to construct the story of his musical improvisation. There is rhythm, the melodic shape of the interval, and the harmonic tone. If we are improvising our internal sense of self within the specific situation, we recognize that there is a theme to the context.

If we are in a group meeting, there can be a rhythm that pushes the tempo too quickly in order to get through the meeting. The interval, the melodic shape is that sense of coming together so that everyone feels like they are in sync with the whole. However, I have been in meetings where one person wants to take over and be the solo artist. As a result, the melody goes flat, and the harmony of the group does too.

The ideal meeting has a rhythm that flows with the whole group. Each person takes their turn playing a solo, and then as the communication swings, the harmony becomes infectious.

Our lives can resemble a similar type of improvisation. What Burton doesn’t talk about is that the musician has to learn to play a particular way in order to improvise within its structure. The teacher/ mentor has endowed the musician/the person with knowledge and skills that are applied through the process of improvising. We learn to observe, discern, decide, choose, act, and reflect. Those become the elements that we play off of.

Our Synthetic Story

If you are familiar with the improvisation that happens in jazz, you will know that when the same tune is played, it is never quite the same. The same is true for the story of our lives. We can go to the same office every day, sit at the same desk every day, do the same ritual task every day, and leave knowing that one day is different from another. The reason for this is that story of our life is a living story. Each day is a new day. Each encounter is a new encounter even if it is with the same people.

If we were to treat our lives as an unfolding story, we would see how we can craft our story to not only make life more meaningful but to create a greater impact as a result. When I speak of our lives having an unlimited impact, I mean that we can organize them to reach for the fulfillment of our potential.

Just as seeing ourselves improvising our lives like a jazz musicians, so we can take the parts of our lives and create a story that sings along.

The Story Grid

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend about this idea of our lives being understood as a story. We talked about having stories that we constantly share because they represent a defining moment in our lives.

I made the comment that a story is not simply a telling of facts and the sequence of events. It has a different purpose. It needs to draw us in, hold our attention, and then provide an emotional resolution that is satisfying.

Sean Coyle is a writer and editor who created the Story Grid to help people write better stories. I see how we can use his methodology to create the story of our lives.

The principles of the Story Grid are …

STORY GRID 101: THE FIVE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF THE STORY GRID METHODOLOGY

• Stories are made up of distinct parts, or units.

• Stories are about change.

• The change that happens in stories concerns Universal Human Values, the things that most people would say are necessary to survive and thrive in the world—or alternatively, the things that keep us from surviving and thriving.

• Each unit of story has a Story Event, a one-sentence distillation of what’s happening and what value is changing.

• Within each story unit we find a pattern of change we call the Five Commandments of Storytelling.

  • Inciting Incident

  • Turning Point Progressive Complication

  • Crisis

  • Climax

  • Resolution

Let’s create a short-hand version of the Five Commandments of Storytelling as a way to synthesize our life story.

• Inciting Incident - Crisis that Awakens our Awareness

• Turning Point Progressive Complication - Mid-Life Transition Point

• Crisis - Trauma, Setback, Loss, Defeat

• Climax - Recovery, Renewed Purpose

• Resolution - Victory, Success, Peace

Intuition - Improvisational Life Storytelling

There is a subtle difference here between telling a story that describes our life and creating a story that plans what our life could be. Here the skills of improvisation can help. To envision what is possible for our lives, we need to turn to our intuition.

Iain McGilchrist writes,

“Much of what we call intuition is the result of what John Kay calls ‘finely honed, well-developed skills.’ ‘Well-developed’ here means repeatedly exercised through practice, and it is on the grindstone of experience that our intuitions are honed. Even if they manifest as cognitive, they are embodied, in the sense that they are both informed by and inform the motion of our limbs, our breathing and pulse, the emotion of our heart and gut and mind, togehter with alert perception, and intelligent insight, all manifest in interaction with, rather than abstractive from, the world. Such intuitions are highly context-sensitive, responsible and responsive, not random or willful; they are the fruit of disciplined attention to the world over time.”

The picture here is a whole person living a whole life that at the same time is not complete and never finished in terms of its potential for impact. We live in a time and space that transcends the particulars of science to enable us to see a world far more synthetic and whole than our imaginations may have once thought.