Paradise can be a bit sluggish. A trip to the mainland and then the company of wonderful people–you, for one, of course, David–makes life that much richer.

Difficult? Nah.

You’ve set a pretty high bar for yourself. Life doesn’t necessarily have to be difficult to be worthwhile.

Most people like stability, which is related to equilibrium. But the laws of nature include entropy, meaning that the world naturally moves from states of order to states of disorder. The ultimate chaotic state is chaos.

It takes energy to keep things in order. We normally think of this as maintenance. At a certain point, though, the amount of energy required for maintenance gets too expensive, and we (sometimes) move on to something else. This could be an old car where the part to replaced has gone into short supply. It could also be the point at which we reach middle age, and give up on cosmetics that make us look young.

We’ve heard the expression of “bottoming out”. If we think about total chaos as most disordered state, then I think that we rarely get that far. Most people don’t keep their old cars until they have to be towed away. It’s all about how much disorder we can each personally stand, before we feel that we need to move on.

I’ve been lecturing in a master’s program in Finland, recently. One of the personal development activities that I do with them — they’re not exclusively engineers, but a lot are — is to run a Belbin team roles test with them, as well as encouraging them to do a Myers-Briggs test (e.g. the Keirsey temperament sorter at http://www.advisorteam.com/temperament_sorter) and an Enneagram (e.g. at http://similarminds.com).

Although the inclination is for each person to reflect on who he or she “is”, I encourage them to think about how they communicate with each other, and how they are perceived by each other. Of course, doing such tests is more logical than intuitive, but it seems to help these prospective managers think about how they’re dealing with others interpersonally.

In the British version (playing on Food Tv Canada), they don’t bleep the expletives, and sometimes the restaurants fail.

In the first episode of the U.S. version, the bully owner in the family business learned the errors of his ways, and turned around his business. He even threw a family day event for his village on Long Island! I’d like to see the cameras sent back in after a year, to see if the “happy ending” continues.

He was relating the high rate of suicides in Japan. At least once per day, someone jumps onto the railway tracks. Part of the therapy that he found helpful was having patients clean toilets. There’s something real about doing practical chores when you think that your world is falling apart!

I coauthored a research paper on “Negotiated Order in Network-Form Organizations”, where we elaborated on David Hawk’s ideas around legal order (i.e. rules) and negotiated order (i.e. dealing with the situation at the time at happens, rather than pre-arranging rules).

The example from Anselm Strauss was in an emergency room in the south side of Chicago. An emergency room works a lot on negotiated order — they deal with cases as they come through, and roles are defined according to whoever is on call, and available. This isn’t chaos, it’s dealing with the world situationally.

Planning is a form of legal order. (I’d actually prefer to call it rule-based order, but David Hawk would probably argue with “laws” of nature). When we over-plan, we miss opportunities that we see along the way.

I’ve learned over the past decade to leave more room for negotiated order. This wasn’t my natural behaviour, but I’ve now become comfortable with the slight sense of disorientation from taking the chance, and having to be alert to the world.

I recovered from my jet lag from Japan … and 3 weeks later, am working down jet lag in Oxford, England, at the UKSS meeting.

I wonder if there are any really good studies out there on both immediate emotional changes and long term consequences.

I’m up to my neck right now writing a new paper and can’t really do a good search right now.

It’s important to be aware of and monitor our own bodies and our own responses to what we put into them. Another interesting book is The Schwartzbein Principle, written by a woman endocrinologist who is concerned with diet and goes into women’s hormonal health.

I’m glad that you’re paying attention!

There will always be differences that will clash between two people; cultural level, lifestyle, religious even libido.

At the end, it always works out.

I think that one of the challenges with modelling or defining love is that it has to be viewed from both individual and group perspectives. What does it mean when a woman is in love with a man, but the man isn’t in love with the woman?

In economics, utility theory has some of the right ideas. It’s okay to order preferences (e.g. I love person X more than person Y). It’s not possible to create a quantitative scale (e.g. I can’t measure that I love person X twice as much as person Y). Love is not symmetric (e.g. although X loves Y, Y doesn’t necessarily love X). Finally, love is not transitive (e.g. although X loves Y and Y loves Z, this does not mean that X loves Z).

re: synergy. Thanks for the reminder about the hydrogen/oxygen and water example. I’ll have to revisit and use it.

re:design space. If he learns to pick up his clothes, he has paid attention to me, he cares, he is on my side and helping us, and maybe I will open up and experience that old love feeling again. I will more likely experience it if I am taking care of myself, if I’m able to sort out what is going on with me and my life and still have the energy to open up to him.

The tricky part is that maybe I was attracted to him while on birth control pills and now I’m off of them. My subconscious response to the pheromones he throws out becomes negative.I don’t even know why I don’t love him any more. I just don’t.

Yes, like and love involve different physiological responses/pathways.

Okay, it’s all more complex than my simple model suggests, but really it comes down, in any given moment, to, am I open or closed? When I open up, then I will get the feedback I need to adjust and adapt in response to whatever hits me.

Gosh, I didn’t touch on the type/scale issue.

When the flow is blocked, when I’m relatively closed from anger or frustration or any negative emotional reaction, usually I want him to do something and he’s not up for it. I’m usually tired with low blood sugar.

When we disagree I can get angry or I can get curious. When I get curious, I’m more open and then he’s more open. It’s way less work and we get creative together.

So, yes, paying attention is work, but it’s a whole lot less work than the alternative. And as it becomes a habit, it’s hardly any work at all.

And I see love as genetic and physiological. The feeling and expressions that show we are open to others. It creates bonds not just in us but in animals too. Read Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s “When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals.”
Jaak Panksepp, author of “Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions,” slowed down the audio recording of mice and discovered that they laugh when tickled.
It’s all in place to assure bonding and survival.
In corporate life, it’s about the flow of information/ideas, matter, and energy toward achieving the mission/vision/purpose of the company. Good feelings about that mission/purpose represent an openness to it, encourage a flow of information, matter, energy toward it.
A simple mental model, maybe, but I find it extremely useful and practical for getting things done in all aspects of my life.

I’ve always liked the statement: a man marries a woman hoping that she will never change; a woman marries a man hoping that he will.