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The concept of
autopoiesis has long surpassed the realm of biology. It has been used in areas so diverse
as sociology, psychotherapy, management, anthropology, organizational culture, and many
others. This circumstance transformed it in a very important and useful instrument for the
investigation of reality. Years ago, Chilean scientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco
Varela proposed the following question: to what extent human social phenomenology could be
seen as a biological phenomenology? The purpose of this article is to look for an answer
to this question. However, before getting to it I think that it is necessary to review
some of the fundamental principles introduced by these two authors.
Autopoiesis
Poiesis is a
Greek term that means production. Autopoiesis means autoproduction. This word appeared for
the first time in the international literature in 1974, in an article published by Varela,
Maturana, and Uribe, in which living beings are seen as systems that produce themselves in
a ceaseless way. Thus, it can be said that an autopoietic system is at the same time the
producer and the product.
In
Maturana’s viewpoint, the term "autopoiesis" expresses what he called
"the center of the constitutive dynamics of living systems". To live this
dynamics in an autonomous way, living systems need to obtain resources from the
environment in which they live. In other words, they are simultaneously autonomic and
dependent systems. So, this condition is clearly a paradox.
This
self-contradictory condition cannot be adequately understood by linear thinking, according
to which everything must be reduced to the binary model yes/no, or/or. When
dealing with living beings, things, and events, linear thinking begins by dividing them.
The next step is the analysis of the separate parts. No attempts are made to look for the
dynamic relationships that exists between them.
This
autonomy-dependency paradox, which is a characteristic feature of living beings, is better
understood when one uses a way of thinking that encompasses systems thinking (which
examines the dynamic relationships between the parts) and linear thinking. This model has
been proposed by French author Edgar Morin, who called it "complex thinking".
Maturana and
Varela proposed an instructive metaphor that is worthwhile to recall here. In their
viewpoint, living systems are self-producing machines. No other kind of machine is able to
do this: their production always consists in something that is different from themselves.
Since autopoietic systems are simultaneously producers and products, it could also be said
that they are circular systems, that is, they work in terms of productive circularity.
Maturana maintains that as long as we are not able to understand the systemic character of
living cells, we will not be able to adequately understand living organisms. I reaffirm
that this understanding can only be adequately provided by complex thinking. However, we
live in a culture that is deeply formatted by linear thinking. This fact resulted in
important consequences, some of which are very grave, as we will see later in this text.
Structure,
organization, and structural determinism
As stated by
Maturana and Varela, living beings are structure-determined systems. What happens to us in
a given moment depends on our structure in this moment. These authors call this concept
structural determinism. The structure of a given system is the way by which their
components interconnect with no changes in their organization. Let us see an example
related to a non-living system — a table. It can have any of its parts modified, but
keeps being a table as long as these parts are left articulated. However, if we disconnect
and separate them, the system can no longer be recognized as a table, because its
organization is lost. Thus, we could say that the system is extinguished. In the same way,
the structure of a living system changes all the time, which demonstrates that it is
continuously adapting itself to the equally continuous environmental changes.
Nevertheless, the loss of the organization would result in the death of the system.
Thus,
organization determines the identity of a system, whereas structure determines how its
parts are physically articulated. Organization identifies a system and corresponds to its
general configuration. Structure shows the way parts interconnect. The moment in which a
system loses its organization corresponds to the limit of its tolerance to structural
changes.
The fact that
living systems are submitted to structural determinism does not mean that they are
foreseeable. In other words, they are determined but this does not mean that they are
predetermined. As a matter of fact, since their structure changes all the time — and
in congruence with the aleatory modifications of the environment —, it is not
adequate to speak about predetermination. We should rather speak about circularity. In
order to avoid any doubts about this issue, we would better bear in mind this detail: what
happens to a system in a given moment depends on its structure in this very moment.
The world in
which we live is the world that we build out of our perceptions, and it is our structure
that enables us to have these perceptions. So, our world is the world that we have
knowledge of. If the reality that we perceive depends on our structure — which is
individual —, there are as many realities as perceiving people. This explains why the
so-called purely objective knowledge is impossible: the observer is not apart from the
phenomena he or she observes. Since we are determined by the way the parts of which we are
made interconnet and work together (that is, by our structure), the environment can only
trigger in our organisms the alterations that are determined in the structure of these
organisms. A cat can only perceive the world and interact with it by means of its feline
structure, not with a configuration that is does not have, as for instance the human
structure. By the same token, we humans cannot see the world the same way as a cat does.
Thus, we do
not have adequate arguments to affirm the reality of this objectivity which we use to be
so proud of. In Maturana’s viewpoint, when someone says that he or she is objective,
it means that he or she has access to a privileged worldview, and that this privilege in
some way enables he or she to exercise an authority that takes for granted the obedience
of everybody else who is not objective. This is one of the basis of the so-called logical
reasoning.
Our
conditioning leads us to see the world as an object, thus we think of ourselves as
separate from it. And we go even further: through the ego, we see ourselves as observers
separate from the rest of our own psyche. In order to operate such an objective proposal,
it is necessary to establish a boundary between the ego and the world, the same way we did
between the ego and the rest of our totality. So, since we are divided the same will
happen with our knowledge, which will also result divided and limited.
This is the
final result of our alleged objectivity: a fragmented and restricted worldview. It is from
this position that we think of ourselves as authorized to judge everybody who does not
agree with us, and condemn them as "non-objective" and "intuitive"
people. In other words, departing from a fragmented and limited viewpoint, we think that
is possible to arrive to the truth and show it to our peers — a truth that we imagine
that is the same for everybody.
Structural
coupling
According to
Maturana and Varela, living systems and the environment change in a congruent way. In
their comparison, the foot is always adjusting to the shoe and vice versa. This is a good
manner to say that the environment triggers changes in the structure of systems, and
systems answer by triggering changes in the environment and so on, in a circular way. When
a system influences another, the influenced one answers by influencing back, that is, it
develops a compensatory behavior. The first organism then proceeds to act again over the
second one, which replies once more — and so on, as long as the two systems keep
going in this coupling condition.
We already
know that living systems are determined by their structure. Nevertheless, it is important
to keep in mind that when a system is in structural coupling mode with another one, at a
given moment of this relationship the conduct of one of them is a constant source of
stimuli for compensatory answers from the other. These are, therefore, transactional and
recurrent events. When a system influences another, the influenced one sustains a
structural change — a deformation. On replying, the influenced system gives to the
influencer an interpretation of how this influence was perceived. A dialogue is therefore
established. In other words, a consensual context is started, through which structurally
coupled organisms interact. This interaction is a linguistic domain.
To put it in
another way, in this transactional ambit the conduct of each organism corresponds to a
description of the behavior of its partner. Each one "tells" to the other how
its "message" has been perceived. This explains why there is no competition
between natural systems. What exists is cooperation. However, when culture meets nature
— as happens with human beings — things change.
I reaffirm
that there is no competition (in the predatory sense of the term) between non-human living
beings. When men refer to some animals as predators, they are anthropomorphizing them,
that is, projecting on them a condition that is peculiar to humans. Since they do not
compete between themselves, non-human living systems do not "dictate" each other
norms of conduct. If natural conditions keep unchanged, there are no authoritarian
commandments nor unconditional obediency between them. Living beings are autonomous
systems. Its conduct is determined according to their own structures, that is, according
to the way they interpret influences that come from the environment. They are not subdued
systems, that is, they are not unconditionally obedient to outside determinations.
In the case of
human societies, in which the prevailing conditions are not only those provided by nature,
this is exactly what marketing and other means of mass conditioning try (and in many cases
succeed) to do with entire populations. Thus, it is possible to reach to mass-production
of subdued people, provided conditioning stimuli are widespread and constant. This is what
psychoanalyst Félix Guattari calls subjectivities production. With this concept, he
introduces the idea of an industrial, mass-produced, capitalism-formatted subjectivity.
This is the result of the operation of huge conditioning systems, by means of which
capital (today in its neoliberal triumphant phase) builds and maintains its immense market
of power. In other words, all these efforts are directed to the consolidation and
continuing operation of violence against the most basic of the characteristics of living
systems — autopoiesis.
The notion
that living systems are structurally determined is of utmost importance for many areas of
human activity. In psychotherapy, for instance, transference and countertransference can
be understood as manifestations of this structural coupling, in which changes sustained by
the client are determined only by his or her structure. They cannot, therefore, be
considered as caused or produced in any way by the therapist. As a consequence, it is very
important to keep in mind that the consensual domain that results from structural coupling
of autopoietic systems is indeed a linguistic context — but not in the mere sense of
transmission of information.
Sociocultural
extension
Maturana and
Varela pointed out that Darwin’s evolutive theory transcended the simple diversity of
living beings and their origin and extended to many areas, as for example the culture. As
we know, this theoretical proposal emphasizes the dimensions of species, aptitude and
natural selection. These notions are nowadays the basis for social darwinism, which is the
utilization of Darwin’s ideas to justify predatory competition between men. In this
sense, it is a fundamentalist interpretation.
In the same
way, the idea of transcendence has been used to justify social exclusion and allied
phenomena, as political and economic exploitation. On account of this, individuals would
have a very small meaning and value as compared to species. As a consequence, people are
supposed to give everything (which includes their lives) for the benefit of perpetuation
of species — but the opposite is by no means always true.
When speaking
about this issue, Maturana and Varela recall the following arguments, which have been
largely applied to our societies:
a) the
evolution is the evolution of human species;
b) according to the law of natural selection, the more fit will survive;
c) competition leads to evolution, and this applies to the human beings too;
d) those who did not survive were not able to contribute to the history of human
species.
Summing up,
individuals should let natural phenomena evolve and stay in a kind of passive attitude
— everything for species sake.
However, the
same authors state that these arguments should not prevail when one needs to justify the
subordination of the individual to the species, because biologic phenomenology occurs in
the individual, not in species. In other words, these arguments should not prevail because
biologic phenomenology belongs to the part, not to the whole. Since the way of being of a
given individual is determined by its structure — which is autopoietic —, there
should not exist discardable individuals, either in relation to species, society, mankind,
and any other instances, important or transcendent as they may be.
Ordinations,
societies and individuals
In nature
— as stated by Maturana and Varela —, there is a tendency to the constitution of
increasingly complex autopoietic systems. This occurs through the coupling of simpler
autopoietic unities to build up more complex organizations, in which the hierarchy
principle is the rule: a system is inside another one, that is superior to it; this one
is, by its turn, inside another one, that is superior to it; and so on. This happens in
multicellular organisms and, according to Maturana and Varela, maybe in the cell itself.
The main
question is to know whether this circumstance could be applicable to human societies. If
so, they could be seen as first-order autopoietic systems. In this line of reasoning,
people’s autopoiesis would be subordinated to the autopoiesis of the societies in
which they live. Thus, it could be ethically justifiable the sacrifice of individuals for
the sake of societies. In these circumstances — as Maturana and Varela say —, it
would very much difficult for human beings to act on the autopoietic dynamics of the
societies to which they belong. I certainly agree with this argument, and also think that
it is possible to reinforce it with some more considerations. In order to be able to
develop them, I will stay in the domain of biology.
We know that
an autopoietic system produces itself utilizing resources from the environment. In order
to be able to go on with this process, a human organism, for instance, keeps discarding
its worn-out cells. These dead parts are continuously replaced for new ones, and so the
process continues while the organism keeps alive, that is, autopoietic. However, as far as
it is alive, no autopoietic unity discards any of their living components. There are no
prescindible parts in natural systems.
As a result
— and always keeping the focus on the biologic context —, a society could only
be considered autopoietic while satisfying the autopoiesis of all the individuals that
constitute it. Thus, a society that discards young and productive individuals (by means of
strategies as production of subjectivities, wars, genocide, social exclusion and other
forms of violence) is a self-mutilating and therefore pathologic system.
If men were
only natural beings, their autopoiesis would obviously be operated only in the natural
way. The fact that men are also cultural beings lead them to operate their autopoiesis in
a different manner — different and pathologic, because it is a self-aggressive one.
Culture conditions individuals, which by their turn reciprocate, and so on, in a
circularity that cannot be understood in terms of linear thinking. Why is this so? We know
that there are no single-caused phenomena in nature — and this case is no exception.
Even so, one can affirm that the main cause of this dysfunction is the prevailing mental
model of our culture — linear thinking. We are deeply conditioned by this model,
which stimulates immediatism and assign a high value to war and competition. This is the
main reason by which our societies are pathologic living systems.
It is very
important to repeat that what makes our societies behave like this is not the cultural
dimension in itself, but the kind of culture under which we live, that emphasizes the
belief that predatory competition is a good, healthy and ethically justifiable way of
life. Its most visible practical manifestation is competitivity — the compulsion to
not only winning, but also eliminating our opponents, the compulsion of leading to the
last consequences aggressivity, implacability and the need to exclude.
All of us are
to some extent influenced by the unidimensionality of linear thinking, which leads us to
think that the most pleasant side of a victory is to defeat someone. This the so-called
zero sum game: an interaction in which for someone’s victory to be satisfactory the
defeat of the opponent is an indispensable condition. In a climate like this, people,
things, and events cannot be complementary: something must necessarily be removed and
discarded so that something else could be put in its place. This situation may even be
inevitable in some specific contexts, but it certainly does not have the wideness that we
imagine.
In any case,
the idea of the other as an invariable adversary, as an enemy to exterminate, is one of
the fundamental features of the competitivity of our culture. Through it — and
specially in the domain of business and corporations —, we live our daily paranoia.
It is a worldview that excludes the possibility that the other could be momentarily
defeated by one’s competence, but preserved in order to be capable, in the future, to
learn how to win, that is, to learn how to be competent. The ideal of competitivity,
however, is to win in such a way that the winner could be always the first and the only
one — as if we could exist without our human fellows, and, even worse, as if anybody
could be the first and the only one without being also the last one.
Let us say the
same thing in another way. Some paragraphs ago, I wrote that in nature there is no
competitivity. What exists is competence. As noted by Maturana, when two animals meet
before the same piece of food and only one eats, this happens because in that specific
moment one of them was the most competent to do so. But this does not mean that the
animal that was unable to eat is doomed to be, from that moment on, forever forbidden to
eat until death arrives. This does not happen in nature.
However, when
circumstances involve the competitivity of human culture, the individual who succeeds to
eat do not satisfy himself with this fact: he or her needs to make sure that the one who
was not able to eat must cease forever to be a threat. In other words, competitive men
usually do not feel sure of their competence, so they have the need to get rid of whoever
could jeopardise them. In other words, when men cannot trust in themselves as living
beings, their peers must be eliminated as soon as possible. But even so — let us
insist on this point —, this cannot be ascribed to the cultural dimension in itself:
it plays such a role in a culture like ours, which do not know how to deal with aleatority
and ceaseless change. And these conditions, as we know, constitute the very essence of
life. In other words, we do not know how to deal with autopoiesis — that is why we
feel ourselves in need to aggress it and to deny its reality.
It is obvious
that these considerations do not invalidate the concept of autopoiesis. On the contrary,
it stands even more validated by the demonstration of its efficacy in once more diagnosing
the self-aggressive condition of we humans — a condition that we have extended to our
societies. Let us recall now the question asked by Maturana and Varela: to what extent
human social phenomenology may be seen as a biological phenomenology? The above
reflections have already answered it: social phenomenology can surely be seen as a
biological phenomenlogy — but it is a pathologic condition.
Values and
depreciations
Let us add
some more reflections. Martin Heidegger, among others, states that individuals have the
tendency to alienate themselves to the things of the world. This makes them forget the
Being. This alienation leads us to value things in an excessive way and then to depreciate
ourselves and, by extension, do deny the humanity of our peers. In other words, people see
each other as trading goods. This is a well-known social feature.
In this same
direction, our need for transcendence is also depreciated. Let us consider the quest for
spiritual values that could guide and justify human existence. In societies as ours, in
which people are seen as mere objects, such values tend to be excessively idealized, and
this further increases the distance between them and ordinary people. As a result, we will
do everything we can to preserve such values, which includes an increased contempt for the
lack of transcendentality of our peers, and they will answer in the same way. Psychologist
Emílio Romero has an illustrative phrase about this issue: "It is not easy to love
simple, limited, contradictory, oscillating, flesh and bone mortals like ourselves. It is
easier do admire distant idols, maybe protectors in their unattainable majesty".
As history
shows, this attitude has produced regrettable results. Everybody knows about societies in
which the marked inclination toward spirituality has produced and still produces legions
of socially excluded. On the other hand, we know that the excessive tendency toward
materiality has produced and still produces the same legions of indigents. It seems that
the excess of non-linearity of thought is as noxious to autopoiesis (that is, for life) as
the excess of linearity (that is, of rationality).
Furthermore, a
new phenomena has appeared and consolidates itself at a fast rate. I am referring to
over-idealization of money. As we know, the capital has been since a long time the basic
value of our culture. For the past several years, however, it has been very easy to
idealize it even more. This is due to the ascent of the so-called "volatile
money", represented by the intangible ciphers that circulate electronically through
the global markets. This enhanced "transcendentalization" of money has been
adding, now in a vertiginous way, more fuel to the bonfire in which the socially excluded
are mercilessly burned out. This discardability of people — which is the basic
manifestation of the pathology of our culture — is quickly increasing as years go on.
Thus, a truly autopoietic society cannot coexist with the predatory competition which is
the outstanding mark of our culture.
Summing up, these reflections lead to the following conclusions:
a) As proposed by Maturana and Varela, autopoiesis is indeed a concept that
resolve and clearly defines the problem of biologic phenomenology.
b) According to this viewpoint, social phenomenology can be seen as a
biological phenomenology, because society is composed of living beings. As a
consequence, the idea of autopoiesis, when applied as an instrument of social
analysis, confirms the conclusion already established by other means of
investigation — that our societies are self-mutilating, pathologic systems.
c) A sizeable part of this pathology may be explained by the fact that the
mind of our culture is formatted by linear thinking, which states that causes
stand immediately before effects or are very close to them, and maintains that
these relationships always occur in the same context of space and time.
d) This mental model is obviously necessary for the understanding and the
practice of the mechanical circumstances of life (material production,
ingestion, processing, excretion, and exchange of tangible goods), but it is not
sufficient to understand and to deal with the events of life that involve
feelings and emotions.
e) As a result, the linear mental model is only adequate as a basis for the
conventional market economy, that underestimates or simply discards the
non-mechanical dimensions of human existence. As a consequence, this economy
keeps creating scenarios in which the integral human being (that is, the complex
human being) is always divided, used and finally excluded.
f) Therefore, we are talking about the consequences of an
oversimplification of human condition, which pretends that it is possible to
resolve systemic problems by means of a linear and unidimensional mental model.
g) As a result, increasingly morbid societies have been built, which insist
in disrespecting the autopoiesis of their components. We live in communities
that describe themselves as always looking for a good quality of life. However,
when observed with a more rigorous look, what can be seen is that this quality
is accessible only to a minority. Furthermore, the costs of this quality are
dangerously (and increasingly) high, because it keeps generating a dreadful
series of by-products — which begin with social exclusion and end in death.
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© Humberto Mariotti, 1999
* HUMBERTO MARIOTTI.
Professor and coordinator of the Center for Leadership Development of the
Business School São Paulo (BSP). National and international lecturer. Researcher
on complexity and complex thinking. Coordinator of the Nucleus of Studies on
Management of Complexity of the Business School São Paulo.
E-mail [email protected]
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