SYNERGY
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu,
pepinsky.blogspot.com
May 9, 2012
I conceive
all mass to be systemic resistance to waves of energy that flow in waves around
and through us. Energy as humans know it
is the force of human will to live that gets somewhere, commonly thought of as
achieving goals or objectives, or ultimately as sustaining homeostasis in our
own bodies. Common words for force are
organizing, growing, enforcing or cooperating—accelerating or concentrating
life’s labors. All matter contains
energy at a price, all friction among organisms creates heat. Heat is entropy as we experience it, from
fever to hunger to body counts. The
energy expended to sustain oneself and one’s kind has its own rate of decay,
its own half life. In our human case,
the more energy we expend to extend our own lives, the more rapidly we create
human waste, from battlefield deaths to prisons to famine and pestilence—the more
concentrated destitution and wealth become.
From
richer rich to poorer poor, one response to social decay is to get somewhere
faster, commonly known where I live as efficiency or productivity. Getting somewhere faster is power, more energy
efficiency. While I have toyed with the
idea of distinguishing power “over” others from power “with” others, I think
that however well intended, all power is implicitly over others, as for example
in winning or losing political representation.
As power is amassed, resistance grows among losers, as now in Wisconsin
with the looming prospect of having the loser of the last gubernatorial
election defeat the incumbent, or with US invasion and occupation of
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bursts of
resistance to power unite conviction on all sides that some romantic notion of
imposing social order depends on blaming foreigners to one’s own kind such as
bankers, infidels and immigrants. In
contests of power, even cults of personality and empires eventually fall, dying
or transforming with a fiery and often prolonged series of wars against foreign
and domestic enemies.
I
certainly been a powermonger myself. I
have often systematically resisted convention, as in the classroom, and with
appeals even to get my own tenure and promotion, let alone in advocacy for
students and staff in virtually all the grievance channels on campus and in
testimony on behalf of children in custody cases or in criminal cases. I try to limit the damage I might do by
setting boundaries on my involvement in organizations or movements or organized
faith. I try to reserve time for synergy.
As systolic is to my blood pressure, so enjoyment of power is to my will
to live.
Moments
of synergy rests on adherence to power structures. In these moments, other boundaries in our
relations are relaxed, and new foundations for relations are created in their
place. This requires letting go of
attachment to time—taking power out of the energy that flows out of us. So for instance, when I was mediating
victim-offender disputes, I joined other mediators in celebrating most cases in
which freedom to confront one another face to face by simple safety rules let
grievances be aired freely, which often resulted in parties’ agreeing to terms
they themselves invented. I emphasized
as mediation opened that I for one was willing to continue mediation, in further
sessions if necessary, until everyone in the room felt that everything that
needed to be said had been said by someone.
I sought in other words to take the time out of responding to discord. Or in teaching, I abandoned attempts to “cover”
predetermined material rather than allowing room for discourse to move in
unanticipated directions in the course of mutual accommodation. Or in deciding where I would live when I
retired, in favor of letting a partner carrying me wherever she turned out to
be. Or when two people build sustenance
together with less than half the effort it would take either of them to sustain
her- or himself alone. Synergy thrives
on serendipity. Synergy in our relations
builds trust. We know it as enjoyment of
love and support, as security that others will be there for us in times of need,
and who will stand by us when we are attacked.
My late friend, mentor and colleague, Les Wilkins, used to send his
graduate research design students to go out and find serendipity. To me, serendipity increases as I let go of
trying to get somewhere in particular, as by settling right by might, or by
planning the rest of my life and obeying or commanding others. Selfishly, I rely on taking time to enjoy
synergy as my best insurance that I will not die alone. This is how I have come to want to live.
Power
and synergy are symbiotic: Neither exists without a parallel existence of the
other. This is captured by the concept
of yin/yang, where each force of nature contains seeds of the other. There is no way that power can conceivably be
destroyed except by power itself. As
Egyptians and Libyans have recently discovered, power itself cannot be
overthrown. We know raw power as
personal and structural violence. In the
midst of violence, moments of synergy moderate social friction or entropy that
exercises of power generate, where people survive hell on earth by caring for
another out of love and mutual need.
Where there’s synergy, there’s hope for continued human existence. Synergy entails an attitude that creates,
gives and sustains life. Above and
beyond all, I live and long for moments of synergy Love and peace--hal
