The Dao of Complexity with Jean Boulton
A heart-meets-mind discussion about complexity science and its suprising relation to Daoism, with physicist Jean Boulton. The conversation explores how stability and change are part of a reflexive interweaving of relationships, the importance of actions and behaviors in co-creating the future, and the role of compassion and love in fostering resilience. We also touch on the profound influence of spiritual practices such as Taoism and Buddhism on understanding complexity. The discussion emphasizes the necessity of integrating heart and mind, and how seemingly small, compassionate acts can create significant shifts. Whether you're interested in spiritual traditions, scientific perspectives, or personal development, this episode offers a rich tapestry of insights to inspire and guide you.
00:00 Introduction to Change and the Dao
00:33 The Interconnectedness of Actions and Behaviors
01:11 Embracing Complexity and Wider Perspectives
01:43 Guest Introduction: Jean's Background and Interests
01:50 Understanding Complexity in Science and Everyday Life
04:03 The Mechanistic Worldview vs. Complexity Science
06:29 Personal Journey: From Physics to Philosophy
08:09 The Influence of Family and Early Philosophical Interests
11:14 Process Complexity and the Dao
11:41 The Paradox of Stability and Change
13:31 The Role of Context and History in Shaping Patterns
14:11 Discovering Daoism and Its Connection to Complexity
15:47 The Nuances of Daoism in Understanding Complexity
19:21 The Importance of Actions, Intentions, and Purpose
26:13 The Role of Attention and Noticing in Complexity
27:55 Integrating Heart, Mind, and Body in Complexity Science
33:23 The Embodied Experience of Complexity
35:02 The Interdisciplinary Nature of Complexity
36:04 Meditation and Embodiment
37:19 Tibetan Yoga and Compassion
40:16 Childhood and Personal Growth
42:42 Societal Wounds and Addictions
Loving & Knowing by Hanne de Jaegher
Thank you for being here.
TRANSCRIPT
Jean Boulton on Love & Philosophy
Jean Boulton: [00:00:00] The world generally is always in the process of changing that change is more normal than stability, and the paradox in that statement is that stability comes from a kind of reflexive interweaving of things. The core phrase that I think summarizes the the Dao is the path is made through walking. And what it means, and it's quite different to some other spiritual traditions.
it means there isn't a right way, and we just have to get on it and follow it. It's saying the future is co-created by what we do, by our actions and behaviors collectively as we go. If we understand that we are all. Interconnected that we can't be safe. If you are not safe. we can't, we can't be resilient if you are not resilient.
It creates that pathway into the importance of our actions, behaviors, and intentions. Sometimes in a kind of meditative relational practice, you start to [00:01:00] feel compassion. It doesn't become hard to choose. It becomes something that you feel. You sort of, you awaken the heart through those kinds of practices.
I think being able to embrace complexity, it requires a kind of bigger perspective. It's kind of looking, looking wider and longer being able to integrate disparate ideas. It's being able to hold the heart and the mind together. I think love can be in the cracks as well as just some, some sort of big idea and can make all the difference.
If we can cultivate love, many of, many of the atrocities that we see happening and the selfishness would, would be become harder to perpetrate.
Andrea Hiott: Hello everyone. Welcome to Love and Philosophy. trying to embrace contradictions and ourselves as part of something larger. Exploring philosophical, scientific, technological, poetic spaces beyond either or bounds. to talk about love and science and [00:02:00] philosophy, and also to talk about.
Many different subjects that one is supposed to be on one side or the other of, I'm trying to hold the space for all of that here. Some say it's impossible. I believe it's the only way forward. trying to think about love as a form of knowing, and through that portal, open up to different ways of being. How can we hold the paradoxes of life, but also how can we move into new. forms of life together. Today I'm talking with Jean Bolton.
She's a physicist and an author and She wrote a book called Embracing Complexity with Peter Allen. The book we're gonna talk about today is her most recent, it's called the DAO of Complexity. If you know me, you know, I like Taoism and I also like complexity science, and so how could I not love this book?
It's a wonderful book. I highly recommend it. Gina and I have had a couple of conversations for those of you who support love and philosophy. Thank you so much by the way. You get some [00:03:00] extra snippets from another conversation, but this conversation, I didn't really edit it much. We're just letting it play in full.
It's personal. It's also about the book. It's a balance of what I was trying to talk about at the beginning, what this podcast tries to do, and. trying to hold things such as our spiritual and emotional and personal life with the life of being a scientist, talking about physics, talking about complexity, trying to hold all that together can be really uncomfortable however, it can also be.
Really meaningful and over time, open up a lot of new spaces. I've already found that that happens in these conversations, but just also in what people say to me later after it. So I think it's worth doing and Jean shows us how to hold.
These ideas in new ways. Her book does it too. It's really about embracing complexity and the interconnectedness of the world and how stability [00:04:00] emerges from this reflexive, adaptable behavior of opening, but also of being persistent. the book goes into everything from a very logical analysis to.
Discussing the body art, it comes with a lot of compassion, even though it's very much written to the point and with a lot of clarity. And she does have a physics background, and you definitely sense that and feel that in the end in this conversation, we highlight the role that love plays, how it's crucial in both the resiliency and the patterning Something I think is very important both in the book and in this conversation, is just stressing these small, compassionate acts and the significant impacts that those have on our lives every day in every way, also how those add up to the kind of science that outlives us and helps continue the patterns of.
Life, love, [00:05:00] knowledge, connection. So here's Gene Bolton. Talking about the DAO of complexity. Thank you for being here. I hope wherever you are in the world today, something good is coming into your life and this conversation helps with that in whatever way it can. I appreciate your support. I hope you'll join the Substack.
I should start a Patreon. I definitely have to find a way to continue this effort, and I welcome. Any support you can give to that ideas. very much welcome and thanks. Also, if you join the YouTube, I think it's like a dollar a month. That's also very helpful. There's a giving page.
Anything you wanna do. I appreciate it. We all appreciate it. ' cause this is a community project. It's becoming more and more so, and you're all invited to take part of it in whatever way you can. Okay. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being alive. I'm glad that you are.
Hi [00:06:00] Jean. Thanks for being on Love and Philosophy. It's so nice to see you again. Yeah. Nice to see you too.
Nice
Jean Boulton: to be back.
Andrea Hiott: So we have a big subject today, two big subjects, complexity and the dao, the DAO of complexity. And I guess just to start this idea, complexity. There's so many ways to come at that word. so many different ways in science and also just in everyday life. So maybe you could just tell us a little bit about how you see that word, what it means in your work.
Yeah, no, thank you.
Jean Boulton: Well, I, um, complexity does have its kind of English language usage. You know, if I ask my mum what complexity would mean, she would say some of the things that I would say from a more scientific perspective about, it's, it's things that are interwoven, that it creates a level of uncertainty and a, a sense that things can change.
So I think the core. Aspects of, of complexity, uh, from [00:07:00] my point of view would be this idea of diversity, of things that, that are and, and, and things interacting. So things relationally, interwoven, interacting, they're diverse. The connections can shift and change. And the whole thing is open to, um, its wider context, so it's not like a clock.
You know? Where in a sense we, we imagine that there's very little interaction with the, the, the wider world. It's something that can change, that can morph. I. Um, but remains in this kind of interwoven way. So, so a family, for example, would be a small example of a, of an open complex system of, of interwoven relational, people who are all different, interacting in different ways.
So the signs of complexity studies those kind of situations and comes up with some common views. That help us navigate that. So we're not just saying to people it's complex, get over it. We're saying that [00:08:00] the science of complexity can help us understand the, the, the nature. How that, how that scientific view turns up in practice.
What, what complexity looks like in practice.
Andrea Hiott: Wonderful. And do you see this in contrast to other kinds of science, or do you just see this as one way or path, or how do you see it
Jean Boulton: What people think, um, of science, you know, from coming from physics is, is about, is, is about certainty.
Um, usually not always, but usually often linearity the sense that that things can work like a machine. So if we understand how things start, we can understand how they, we can predict how they're going to develop. So that that science, that mechanistic worldview, um, is associated with the work of Isaac Newton from the 17th century.
Um, he was interested in how planets go around each other and how two bill balls I. Um, bang into each other, but, [00:09:00] but that scientific worldview got translated into the social and the natural world. And we start to think that to be scientific, to be professional in the social world, in management, that's what we should, you know, be doing.
We should be, behave as if the, the organization or the market, um, can be understood in predictable ways and we can decide what to do. So that's so complexity is not saying we know nothing, but it's caveating this idea that, that things are very, um, determined. There's, there's also the, um, the view that came from, um, the science of gases and liquids that the economists have always been very attracted to.
And this is the idea that an economy reaches equilibrium naturally and doesn't, doesn't venture very far from that. So the economists took the maths of, of what's called equilibrium thermodynamics, the science of, of liquids and gases. The management took the, the, the science of Newton [00:10:00] and, um, and in a sense complexity science, which came from a marriage of, of looking at the.
The, the, the physics of open systems coupled with looking at evolution. So it was kind of where physics map biology gives us a much more organic, natural flowing, shifting view of the social and natural world. That seems much more, uh, like. We experience in, in our world. So if I described that to my mom, she would go, yes, I see that.
Whereas if I told her that the world went to plan, well, the world always reached, um, reached balance. She would look at me rather questioningly.
Andrea Hiott: Hmm. That's a good way to say it. Speaking of your mom, what did she think when you told her you wanted to be a physicist? Because you are a physicist, right? Or you're trained in physics.
Jean Boulton: I did, yes. My, my initial, you know, work and research was, was as a physicist. Um, well, I think she, they were, they were, they were ambitious for me, my parents. And they were, they were [00:11:00] thrilled I was going to university and I don't think they minded too much what I did. And it sounded good. So that was enough.
I think that was enough for them. It was, um, my father still didn't think I was capable of changing a plug, you know, an electric plug. Even when I was in second year at university, we'd still come along and say, no, I'll do that for you. But, um, they, they were proud. They were proud of me. But, um, but they were, yes, they were just proud.
I'd gone, gone ahead in, um, gone to university and done something difficult.
Andrea Hiott: Yes. Well, and fathers like to feel important, so Absolutely. And they are important, but. Yes, it does sound very, you know, doctor Law, you're a physicist. It fits in with the It does.
Jean Boulton: Yes, it does. It tick the tick the box that, um, yes. I think I was probably, um, I preferred theory to practice, so I never really was very interested or very good at anything to do with soldiering iron or, um, you know, anything practical.
[00:12:00] But I, I became more and more interested in the philosophy of science and the kind of theory. So my PhD was in quantum physics, um, which opt. Obviously is, is, is scientific, but it, it does kind of sh challenge your worldview. It does, it does sort of shift the way you think about reality. So I think I kind of morphed into having this, this very, this strong interest in philosophy as time has gone on.
Andrea Hiott: So you were trying to understand the world, trying to understand philosophical ideas from an early age, would you say or?
Jean Boulton: Yes. I, I, um. I think from being a teenager, I was always one of these. Yes. But why kind of kids as opposed to Yes, but what, so I would randomly pick up books on philosophy or, or Buddhism or indeed Taoism, um, from an early age.
And I think that, that what really interested me about quantum physics is it does rattle the cave of the idea of, of [00:13:00] what is real, you know, what is certain, um, and. I liked all that. I, I liked this sort of almost, um, you know, it would, I would always wonder, well, why is, why is science and spirituality split?
Does it have to be? When did that happen? But if we're interested in the way things work, why wouldn't there be something more mystical and uncertain about it? So those were kind of natural questions for me from being quite young.
Andrea Hiott: I see. So it was exciting to ask those questions to be a little off, off, unstable, or, yeah.
Jean Boulton: Yes. Oh, yes. No, definitely. No, it was, uh, no, I was, my parents were, my family were generally quite practical, ordinary day-to-day people, so they just sort of regarded me with wonder, I think, because I sort of seemed to have this going on in my head and have these other ideas and interests. But I, I, looking back on it, it, it, um, it was a very formative time and, and my life has kind of woven many of those threads [00:14:00] back together again as time has gone on.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah. It must have been fascinating for them to see their daughter asking these big questions that I, it sounds like they weren't asking, at least not out loud. No, no.
Jean Boulton: I think they, they were more living an ordinary life, so they, they, my mother saw a. Um, I showed her a video of me talking, um, probably 20 years ago, and she was absolutely gobsmacked by the whole thing, you know, seeing me as her daughter who, you know, worrying about my hair or, you know, when we were going shopping and she was just absolutely, um, she wa watched the whole thing, um, with absolute rap attention and, and all she could say was, how do you know these things?
Oh wow. It was rather, yes, it's, uh. So we're, we're all formed by these, these myriad, um, I, I, we might talk about it later, but I think, I think the idea of of love in the world also came from, from my parents. So they might not have been [00:15:00] very educated or gone to university, but they, their values, um, really imbued my life quite strongly.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I definitely wanna talk about love. And you also mentioned this word Daoism though, so maybe we should think about that a bit because your book is called. Of complexity. Yes. And that can seem like quite a jump from complexity to Taoism. So I don't know how, if you wanna try to explain that through your life or, or.
Through your book or it's Yeah,
Jean Boulton: sure. Well, the, the emphasis that I've placed on complexity in this, this book is what I've called process complexity, and it's, it's really emphasizing and something that, that came from, I. The work of Ia PGA Jean, who was one of the founding thinkers in this field of complexity.
And uh, his first book or one of his early books was called From Being to Becoming. And the point he was making [00:16:00] was that the world's generally is always in the process of changing that change is more normal than stability. And the paradox in that statement is that stability comes from a kind of reflexive interweaving of things.
So, um, so for example, if you were to say this family is, is, um, is stable. You would be meaning that the, the patterns of relationships had some given them and adaptability, but there was enough commonality of, of, of relationship and behavior that it, it created a kind of resilience and stability. So, so his interest, and one of the core words for, for process complexity is patterning this idea that, that, that things emerge, stabilize.
Then dissolve and the patterning in an economy, you know, the, the norms of, of how, um, you know, or the patterning in, in a culture, the [00:17:00] norms of behavior, the norms of relationships kind of come into being and stabilize through, through a repetition, but not an exact repetition, but a kind of ability to adapt The same in an ecology.
Why has this wood got these, these, um, species interacting and this wood's got a completely different set of species. So this idea of, of, of a flow, not, not, um, not a flow, meaning everything just ca is changing all the time and we, we dunno what's going to happen next, but something where we understand that that stability.
It's created by reflexive movement, by reflexive, re repeating, but not exact repeating. Mm. Um, so that was, that's the kind of ideas that you get in the worldview of complexity. Also stuff about the importance of, of, um, things developing bottom up or things being local, things being historically shaped. So again, if you think about a family, why does this [00:18:00] family behave this way?
Well, partly it's to do with the past. You know, what's happened in the past who's in the family, and it's partly to do with the context, you know, is this, is this, is this family living in a war? You know, has somebody just lost their job? You know, so, so it's understanding that that contextual, I. And historically shaped nature of things.
So tho those are the ideas within process complexity. And, um, Daoism, my, my colleague Peter Allen, with whom I wrote the, the first book, embracing Complexity in 2015, uh, came back to where we were working, um, in I think 2003 or 2006, clutching a copy of the DDE Ching. This, this. Texts from the fifth century BC saying, coy, I've just picked this book up by, you know, by chance in a secondhand bookshop.
And it reads like a complexity theory textbook. And I was, and [00:19:00] chance partly 'cause I knew about Taoism and it was like, was something I was interested in. And this particular version of the dad etching this particular translation by a couple of guys called Ames and Hall. Had a very long introduction, so it's describing this contextual, past dependent, historically shaped, um, paradoxical patterning of stability in the same language.
And I thought that was gobsmacking. Why, why could they come up with this in the fifth century BC and then we go through all this sophisticated science and end up in, in a, with a very similar worldview. So I studied it, um, and still do it. It, I find it completely. And Trancing to, to study. And I guess what, what the Daoist view adds to, um, the, the science of complexity is sometimes a nuance.
So there are certain things that, that the Dao would, [00:20:00] would bring out in more. In more detail. So to give you an example, the, the Dao uses a phrase of, of paying attention to the beginning of the beginning. So it's saying that the good leader will, will be, be, be still and silent and take in the terrain, take in, you know, the group, the situation.
And with that kind of, um, that apprehension of, of, of the, the whole notice. The tiny shifts or changes that may be important, so we'll, we'll, we'll almost see the beginning before it's a beginning and that that would be something I would, I would say the same in complexity, that we need to understand the current patternings, but we need to pay attention to these tiny shoots of change or these tiny cracks of, of, of.
Destruction. Um, so I would say it in the same way, but the, the poetry of the Dao and the way it describes that creates a nuance for me where I go deeper into [00:21:00] my own, um, subject matter. So that's one reason I really like it. The, the other reason I really like it is, is that, um. In a way, complexity is a science.
It's, it's neutral. It will tell you how the powerful get more powerful as well as it will tell you how to create a resilient, fair world. You know, it, it, it, it's, it's not, it's value neutral in, in a sense. Um, but the DAO is explicitly about cultivating. Yourself in order to create a better FU future. So it, it embeds the idea of how do we cultivate ourselves?
How do, how do I become the best I can be in order to, um, be in relationship with other people with nature and with the future? And, uh, and it embraces the, these kind of paradoxes, which are again, within complexity, but it would be easy not to think about it in those terms. So, you know, the, the Dao would say the end is in [00:22:00] the beginning, you know, the complexity per person would say, well, the patterning is only as stable as, as it's resilient.
And if it, if it starts to unravel, then. It can soon tip into another form so that, that this, this paradox is described very well in, in, um, in Taoism. And I think this, this idea and, and it's, it's kind of links. You know, to love, um, that there is a paradox in, you know, yes, I want to love and honor myself.
Yes, I want to love and honor my community, my family. Yes, I want to be cognizant of what I'm doing now is co-creating the future I. But they, they, they don't give you simple answers. You know, I've got to, I've got to move between. Well, I think, I think actually for now, I'm going to have to say no to my friend's demands, because that's too much for me.
You know, or, you know, I, I'm going to have to make some short term decisions. I'm going to have to [00:23:00] try and make those with the long term in mind, but nothing is certain. So it, it raises these kind of tensions in. If you like him being good, whatever, you know, however, however, one defines that. And in, in, in having compassion in, in loving, um.
The, the core phrase that I think summarizes the, the Dao is the path is made through walking and, um, what it means, and it's quite different to, um, some other spiritual traditions. It, it means there isn't a way, there isn't a right way, and we just have to get on it and follow it. It's saying the future is co-created by what we do, by our actions and behaviors collectively as we go.
Now we're not walking onto an, an empty path because it's been created by what's happened, you know, in the past. So it's not your fault if you turn up in a war zone. Um, but how you move forward is, is [00:24:00] collectively how, how we must think about, uh, about the future. So it places centrally the idea of, of actions and intentions and, and purpose and, and I think that's very powerful.
And I sometimes use the, the phrase that, you know, for me, um, I want to see the future with good ingredients. You know, for me, I'd like a just and fair world, and, and complexity tells you that a, a a just and fair world is actually more resilient. So it's not, it's not just a nice to have, it's actually when, when societies get very unequal, they become much more brittle and less adaptive and much more likely to, uh, to collapse.
So there is, there is a good reason for, for balance and diversity, but actually, you know, we all have to think about our own values and I think that the idea of. The path is made through walking says, well, if you care about your great-grandchildren, you know, if you care [00:25:00] about the future, if you care about people in other parts of the world, we're all interwoven.
You know, climate change is, is a global issue. Pandemics are a global issue. you know, if we, if we, if we understand that we are all. Interconnected that we can't be safe. If you are not safe, you know, we, we can't, we can't be resilient. If you are not resilient, then it, it creates, you know, that, that pathway into the importance of our actions, behaviors, and intentions.
Andrea Hiott: Indeed. I love that phrase. The path is made by walking and there's something in Buddhism very similar too, I think and, and some other traditions. And even in four E philosophy, they use this a lot in inactive philosophy. And it's interesting, as you were were talking, I was thinking, well also the path is made by walking, but the path is the landscape or the path is the earth.
And so all of our paths that we're making by walking are, are that shared space that we. [00:26:00] Trying to Yeah. Orient in the way you were describing.
Jean Boulton: Yes, yes. And and we're not the only agents as well. It is, it is. You know, that sounds very, um, anthropocentric and I'm, I don't think the Dao meant it that way. You know?
It is, it is like the. We are all, you know, we're all, everything is creating the future, but the only bit that, that I can manage, and this is very Buddhist and, and, um, charm Buddhism, for example, was, was quite a marriage between Taoism and, and Buddhism in, in, um, in China. Um, you know, the, the, the focus on the now.
Is, is really saying, well, whatever happened to me in the past and, and, and the thing that I have agency over now is, is how do I take my next step? You know, how do I, how do I treat you? Now is is the bit where I always have agency and people like Viktor Frankl, for example, in. In Auschwitz, you know, was saying even when in, in some senses [00:27:00] if you are in Auschwitz, you're, you know, you, you have very little control over you, over how you are treated.
But you can always smile. You know, you can always have an attitude of kindness to others. I. Um, you know, you can always imagine the future, so, you know, even if, even if your only agency is in the minute, you know, you have one crust of bread, I'll share it with you. I'll pat you on the back. You know, there there's a sense in which, you know, we have, we, as he would say, you know, we, we can always embody the agency that we have and not see ourselves too small.
I think.
Andrea Hiott: Yes, indeed. And by this, focusing on those small acts also makes us bigger. Right? It, I mean, it can just sound sweet as you were saying before, as, oh, just do the right thing. And, but actually it's a empowerment of, it's a way of connecting with your own power or the power beyond you in some way.
Yes.
Jean Boulton: And,
Andrea Hiott: and
Jean Boulton: I, I've write at the end of the book about, um, uh, the, uh, Alba Camus the [00:28:00] plague. And, um, it, it was picked up by Clive Hamilton who was writing about, um, climate change denial. And he says, the, the, the thing he really liked about the plague was, you know, the, there's, there's a plague in.
In, um, in a a town, everybody's probably going to die. You know, some people hoard all their food and hold themselves up and try and stay alive as long as possible. Some other people decide to, you know, eat and drink and make, marry as much as they can. But the doctor who understood more than anyone, the likelihood that things were going to end badly kept walking forward with integrity, helping people.
And, and, um, Clive Hamilton calls it active fatalism. And I think there's something in that you never know. And this is, this is an idea that, that I think is embedded in complexity and Taoism about emergence, that it might look very, that that might be not very probable, but there's always a possibility.[00:29:00]
That things can suddenly change on the head of a pin. And you know, there have been many examples in the world where we really didn't see things coming. And sometimes, you know, things even like the pandemic, you know, which obviously some people saw coming, but it, it re engineers the whole of society quite quickly sometimes.
So I think there's a, there's a paradox in that I might, I might feel quite despairing and I might feel quite tiny, but you know, you never know. You never know what's going to happen. You dunno who'll listen to this. You know, we, we might inspire somebody who, who does something differently, who is in a, in a more powerful position.
So I think, I think holding that idea that I'm, I don't have to see myself as insignificant. That I don't know. But all I do know is that I can be, behave as well as I can and sometimes seize the moment, sometimes be brave. You know, there, there are times when. The world presents as an opportunity to be, to perhaps step into a space or, or be brave.
Andrea Hiott: Absolutely. [00:30:00] And you, I think there's something in there too of not just going with the, the flow in the sense of what you think is going to be what everyone else thinks is right. There's something about what you were saying too, where we can feel like we have to choose between what seemed like binaries my path or your path instead of this paradoxical holding that you're expressing and that's in the Dao.
And there's something about, um. Attention. You've said paying attention a lot does. Well, how do you see that? Does that help us learn how to stay in that place where we can feel actually what's authentic to us and make those choices you were talking about, what, what's the role of attention?
Jean Boulton: Yeah. No, that's a great question.
Um, I, I think that, that, um, some people would approach. A, a complexity as, as a, as an issue of the brain, an issue of thinking. So for some people, and even in the, um, what do they call the, [00:31:00] oh dear, the, um, ESGs that they call this, these kind of development goals that are to do with the kind of the emotional world.
They, they put complexity thinking down and I don't think it's just thinking. That, that, that many of the complexity people that I know, um, who started to handle paradox and subjectivity, you know, if you're going to ask a question like, where are the edges of this pattern in this wood, you know, what is the culture of this organization?
These have a sort of subjective quality to them. Um, is this patient ill. My dentist always used to shake everybody's hand, and I once asked him why he did that, and he said, because I get a real visceral sense of whether this is a, a frail person or a well person, just from that, that kind of physical connection.
So we use our senses in, in a variety of ways to, to know what's going on, to pay attention [00:32:00] and, um. And the Chinese use the word ZXIN, which means heart, mind. They don't differentiate like we tend to do between, you know, what we feel and what we think. So I think that that sort of embedded heart, mind, intuitive, subjective, um, sensory view of what, of what's going on is something that I.
Increasingly well have, have, see us as an important part of an aspect of, of dealing with the complex world that we, that that's, uh, the other, the other part of it I think is so, is that, um, if we are going to, if we just use our, an analytical tools, I can say to you, and this is what I think sometimes, um, perhaps differentiates some.
Approaches to systems thinking rather than complexity. Thinking is the systems thinker [00:33:00] asks more what is, how do, how do we analyze now, oh look, there are these patterns. They're, they're stable. Let's understand how they interact. The complexity person is saying the same. You know what's here now how do, we don't need to know everything about everything, but what are the, what are the dominant patterns, but also how do we notice change?
So there's something about always noticing that however much I analyze now. It may be that I have to notice that, that there's an opportunity that wasn't there before, or something's changed in the wider context that I hadn't taken into account, or there's a crack appeared, you know, that that's an opportunity.
Um, so it, it forms both. An a, an in integration of the heart mind or the mind body, and also an integration of the analysis, um, which might have a subjectivity to it, but they're kind of seeing, seeing what is here with [00:34:00] this, this, this practice of noticing. Um. And, and just to say one more thing, I think the noticing is also part of how we cultivate ourselves.
That if we, if we pay attention to our reactions and our habitual thoughts, or our habitual, um, attitudes, it's how we cultivate ourselves. We start to notice our, our own reactions, our own, you know, behaviors that, that maybe we're not quite even sure why we did it ourselves. So there's something about, about.
Noticing. That's also a cultivation of of ourselves.
Andrea Hiott: That's interesting because I hear you saying the noticing is the, is the whole body, is the bodily being in the world, which is often not what people mean when they say cognition or thinking or mind. There are a lot of movements toward trying to understand that actually the whole body is.
You know, the [00:35:00] way that we do all of these activities, but to, to get to that feeling and that noticing and that bodily presence, is that where the Taoism has helped, uh, you or do you see that as part of the complexity science too? Because it, I'm still not quite sure how we learn how to pay attention, for example, or we learn how to notice.
Is it just by like that process of questioning that you. You sort of begin to notice the world differently in science or Yeah. Or how would you see that?
Jean Boulton: Well, I think, I think that the, the classical complexity science is, is a much more, you know, there's lots of people who, who, you know, do mathematical models of things, interacting with other things.
Um, NFA
Andrea Hiott: institute version of it,
Jean Boulton: yes. And, and. That has, that has its value. What, what PGA regime was bringing into it is, is that in an open situation when you [00:36:00] really embrace, you kind of can't know everything that's going on because there's new things arriving and, and leaving. You know, there's that, that, that, that, that.
The devil is in the detail that, that mm-hmm. There's, there's something beyond mathematics or beyond, um, analysis. And Edgar Murra, who, who's now your French philosopher, who's 102, who wrote a book on complexity and is a, is a wonderful man. Um, he. Differentiates between what he calls general complexity, which is what I'm talking about, the general interweaving of, of resilient patterning that nevertheless can tip into new forms, et cetera, et cetera.
Is is beyond or before mathematics? It's, it's, it's, it's being in the mud as opposed to mapping the terrain. And many complexity. People are analyzing the, the, the map, you know, and getting more and more sophisticated maps. But what PGA regime would say is there's always [00:37:00] something. It may be the absolutely minute things that you can't model because they're not yet there.
Like the Dao is say, that's actually the thing that's going to kind of create a completely radically different future. And no analysis of now is ever going to pick up those, those minutia. So, so I think, I think that that's where, it's, it, I'm trying to move complexity thinking more explicitly, but I'm not saying anything, I don't think PGA Jean would've said, but he wouldn't, he didn't say it quite in these terms, but I'm moving it into this more, um, th this more embodied this, this, this more heart mind.
Everything. You know, in a sense, everything that's there is going to make a difference. So, so what you feel is going to make a difference to the future just as much as what you think. And if you go to a board meeting, you know, you can analyze it in some kind of logical way in terms of what people said, but if you don't understand how people are relating to each other and what the underlying vibes are.
You are [00:38:00] never going to help that, move that group, make a, a good strategic decision or understand what's actually happening in the room. So we know this, you know, you, we don't just analyze our family or expect a social worker to come in and, you know, draw a, draw a map of the family. You know, there's something more embodied.
And I think people like Brian Goodwin, for example, who was a, a, a complexity theorist, um, who was a biologist, you know, he, he started to talk in these terms. Um. So, so I think that that's why, and I think for myself, um. This has been a marriage of my own interest in, in the spiritual, in values. You know, like my, my father was a very kind-hearted person, was always, you know, doing much to my mother's annoyance sometimes he was always helping other people.
Yeah. But civic minded, and I've, I've been brought up, I've kind of, it, it's natural to me to think about society and, and my local communities and. [00:39:00] And to worry about how I treat people. It's, I, I'm, you know, that, that, that kind of thing. So I, I think that, that my, I've got interested in somatic work, um, you know, in, in all kinds of work that kind of, from very different places.
Um. I know you've read the DAV complexity. Some of the book is about what I've called ontological resonance. In other words, if you look at brain science, if you look at some of the work people have done on somatic experiencing, if you look at some of the political writers, you find very similar ideas. I.
and, um, I'm, I'm not trying to tell you they're all the same, but I'm saying to you in the book, you know, look, golly, isn't this interesting? These, these very different, um, schools of knowledge, bodies of knowledge have, have come up with a very similar worldview. Maybe there's something, you know, interesting here.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah. I think what the book does, 'cause you also talk about art and there's a lot of things in there, but you Yeah. Over the course of the book, we start to [00:40:00] understand. The process that is, or the patterning that is similar, which you can't actually put in words, even though you can talk about patterning and process.
Yeah. And you start to show us that we can notice this in many different parts of life. So that's back to that noticing again, and to the perine where it almost feels like a practice.
Jean Boulton: Yes.
Andrea Hiott: Um, that's being given. Would you agree with that?
Jean Boulton: Yes. I, I think, um, it, yes, I, I take seriously my own, um, I. So, you know, I meditate regularly.
I find that that has introduced me to the body, uh, you know, in, in, in a way that I didn't, I didn't know I wasn't embodied, you know, having been brought up to be, to have a, you know, a brain and, and think it, it was it, and sort of that was split off in, in some ways from, from the body as I've, as I've done various kinds of.
Of, of, of practices that that has [00:41:00] become more integrated. And, and I think I've, and partly through that, partly through various sorts of reflective practice and through, you know, through paying attention and showing up to those things, I have tried to hone myself to kind of mature myself. And, um, and, and I, I don't think that happens, you know, I think it is a practice.
Andrea Hiott: I'd be interested to hear how, how you came into understanding yourself as a body, not just stuck in your head, if you felt like sharing it. Yes.
Jean Boulton: Well, I think, I think in a variety of ways, but, there is a, a particular, um, Tibetan Buddhist, uh, field of, of practice called Kanye, a Tibetan leader came to, um, California in the sixties and, and, um, joined in some of the kind of, you know, the, the body work that was going along there. And he kind of emphasized, he realized how disembodied the. People in the West were, and [00:42:00] he developed a series of, of, of exercises, which are called Tibetan Yoga, which are very slow and precise and, and are ways of really almost like introducing us, us into how the body feels and how that changes our cognition or are seeing, you know, so it it, it might be about how you, how you start to tune in to seeing.
Um, the, the, the world in a more panoramic way, you know, rather than kind of focusing, you know, in a very kind of di definitive way that we often get taught to do. And you, you have little breakthroughs with things like that and you think, oh my goodness, you know, I never realized that if I sat here quietly, I could take in this hell vis of the landscape and the bird song suddenly becomes, you know, brighter.
You know, I was too busy thinking about, you know, what I was going to do next. So. You have these little breakthroughs and then you get interested to do more and to take it further and to pay it more attention. And, and [00:43:00] I think it's the same with, with compassion. That, you know, compassion is an idea, you know, well, I should, I should, you know, I could, I could convince you fairly easily that you should think about others, you know, and it would be good to be caring and everybody would nod and say, yes, that's true, but.
Sometimes in a kind of relational practice, in a kind of meditative relational practice, you start to feel compassion. It doesn't, it doesn't, does, doesn't become hard to choose. It becomes something that you feel, it sort of, you awaken the heart through those kind of practices. Um, and then that changes everything.
You don't, you don't forget that. You forget it temporarily, but you have something to, to, to go back to. And, um, you know, some of the, the writing, for example. Brian Goodwin writing about health as you know, how does the doctor really work out your, your health issues? Well, partly, you know, it's not to, to deny [00:44:00] analysis and logic and data, but it's just sometimes how you weave those different perspectives together.
The questions you ask how the person feels, you know, is, is as important as just, you know, what their heart. Rate is and what their this is and what their, that is. You, you are building up a, a much more complex picture of the person in which tho those facts are, are embedded, but they're not. The only thing that, that, that's driving your, your sense of what this person needs in their wellness.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I wanna ask you about feeling and about, because I'm trying to imagine you as a little girl. I, I have a few times. Uh, because you've talked about your parents and it sounds like you had a very stable, loving, safe environment, even to the extent that you were sort of looking, you know, doing some edge work or looking for the instability or, or realizing the instability and trying to understand it.
I want, I wanna hear about that a little bit and how you. How you've [00:45:00] journeyed what path you've been walking in terms of feeling, you know, not only coming into your body, but also with studying physics, the complexity science, the path that you've gone on that led into embracing complexity and then the DAO of complexity.
What's feeling been like in all of that? Has it been. Have you been on a journey in terms of your exploration of what feeling is for you and how you connect with others? Yes. Um,
Jean Boulton: golly. Um, all, all childhoods have wounds and, and traumas of, of various sorts. I, I, I, it, some people perhaps don't, but, but most people do.
And, um. You know, my, my parents were quite strict, so they, they had kind of quite black and white ideas about, about things and, and what they did if you didn't adhere to them. So as, [00:46:00] as a kind of very lively questioning child, you know, that it wasn't, you know, it wasn't always, um. Straightforward. You know, there were, there were traumas in that, and, and I, I guess the truth is, it's your woundedness, it's your, it's your awkwardnesses and your difficulties that, um, you know, that shape who you become.
They, they either get embedded, um, and people say, well, nobody changes. What can you do? Or if you are a kind of. Determined kind of person. I think, I think I always go digging, you know, whether it's quantum physics or me, you know, it's like, why do I, why am I reacting this way? Or why do I feel like this? Um, so I, I think, I think it is a, it is a path of healing woundedness and understanding that, um.
Both individually in societally. You know, a, a book that had a lot of impact on me [00:47:00] a long time ago is, is a book called When Society Becomes an Addict. And it was a dis description of a society that starts to feel, oh, well I don't know very much, you know, that, that man in charge, he must know what he's doing, you know, I'll leave it all to him.
He can be the big daddy and I'll just kind of hope it all works out okay. 'cause who am I to? Question it, and it's a sort of addictive response to a father figure that lets you off the hook and allows you to play. And then if that gets, then get perpetrated into, well, to be a good CI citizen, you must be a good consumer.
You know, spend, spend, spend. Be selfish. You know, you start to create a society of selfish people who kind of, or, or you tell them, well, inequality, you know, they all had the opportunity. You know, it's, it's, it's your fault if, if you are poor. You know, the opportunity was there. There's all sorts of messages.
Societies give people, um, and, and you, you get a toxic society that, that [00:48:00] perpetrates these kind of ideas, you know, that, that. You know, men, men are both selfish and, and not selfish. If you have a society which tells you to be selfish, rewards you to be selfish, you know, or, or you, you will become more selfish, um, as, as opposed to the opposite.
So I, I think, I think both societally and personally, it's often loss wounds, you know, um, difficulties. You know, that, that, um. That are what shapes us if we face up to it. And that, that's certainly with without, you know, go going into gory detail. That's been part of my journey and, you know, and, and, and quite, you know, difficult things to deal with sometimes that have taken a lot of, um, facing up to, but have kind of then are transformative if you are lucky and if you, if you, um, face it and with, with help sometimes.
Andrea Hiott: Makes me think of the work of Joanna Macy and I know [00:49:00] you
Jean Boulton: yeah.
Andrea Hiott: Know her and like her work or are influenced by her work as well. And what you were saying about the society. I hadn't thought of it so much that these are kind of wounds that we take on, that we even, even becoming addicted to buying things or addicted to trying to look better or addicted to having more follows and all of this.
There's something when, when that's happening to us, that we know something is wrong about it. And it becomes hard to hold the space that you were opening up in the beginning where we can see that it's, we can surf it and maybe find another path. yeah. But yeah, I hadn't thought about that, but that does kind of become almost like wounds.
And just to go back to, to Joanna ba Macy, her work is about sort of sitting with that, right? Or, or feeling that, has that been part of your practice?
Jean Boulton: Yes. Um, I mean, Joanna is one of the. People I really admire in the world. It would be somebody I, I, I, I, and I think to be, to, to, to [00:50:00] take this path, you know, is, is to, is to be able to cope with being an outsider and being different.
And I think you need people be through literature or, or in real life, you know? And Joanna's a bit of both. I've, I, I've spent a week with her a couple of years ago. Um. And I've met her before, but you need people who, who, who help you hold, help hold you in these difficult spaces. And, and I'm also trying to hold this space, um, which I think is, is unusual is, you know, you can't just put me in the kind of.
Cuddly feely box, you know, because, because I'm marrying, you know, I can do theoretical physics. I'm marrying, you know, the analysis and the feeling. I'm not saying let's, let's forget about the feeling. You know, Brian Goodwin, you know, he was, he was a, a, a very good mathematician. He was a computational biologist and he married the two.
He, you know, he, he. And, you know, the, these, these big [00:51:00] thinkers, Joanna, Macy's, PhD was, is in looking at the relationship between Buddhism and systems thinking. And it's a beautiful piece of work. You know, she, she's a, has a sharp brain. Mm-hmm. But she's embodied a heartful way of engaging with the world, she has a masterful intellect. It's a very, very good piece of work, but it was always married with.
Her views of compassion and, uh, and, and feeling about the future. And she, she, she always married the two and she's somebody, as you say, that I have always looked up to. And, and being and, and being with her brings tears to your eyes somehow. There's something about how she embodies love really. At the same time as, as having a mind, you know, as a, as sharp as tack.
You know, she's, I mean, she's perhaps showing she's not getting any younger, but you know, that that mixture, that integration as the Chinese habit, it of heart mind, um, is, [00:52:00] is, has been a kind of split, um, that's happened more in the West since the, this idea of, you know, science is about. Facts and logic. And then the rest of it's sort of something to do with spirituality and religion.
And one of the themes I write about in the book is how, uh, you know, in a variety of ways, quantum physics opens the door to mysticism. Again, there's some, there's, there's a, there's as one, um, of my colleagues who is a mathematical physicist said, you know, there's, there's almost like, there's cracks. You know, the, the, the, the universe has got cracks in it.
Never, you can never build it up outta building blocks. You know, it's, it's a bit like a badly made, um, piece of furniture that never quite fits together. And as, as Leonard Cohen said, I love this quote. You know, there's a crack in everything. That's where the light gets in. So there's a sort of reintegration of heart, mind of science and, and spirituality that I think is very interesting.
But it, it doesn't make those people who are, who are transcending that into [00:53:00] people who suddenly give up on logic or data or analysis. It's more about, about an um, of. Of, of a marriage, of marrying the two.
Andrea Hiott: Yes. I really appreciate that you do that with the book and that you say that now, because I think there is a kind of.
There's almost like a reaction if you hear certain words or certain phrases or even Taoism. Uh, yes. You sort of, some people without necessarily meaning to categorize it in a way that would be somehow considered opposite of science. Yes. And yeah. Holding paradox in the way we've been talking about is, is doing, is opening a space for both of those, which is what you're doing right.
Jean Boulton: And, and what I'm trying to say is not that di is science, but that the, that the. The, the, the worldview, the, the metaphysics of complexity theory and the, and the worldview. The cosmology of, of, of Taoism hold a very similar view [00:54:00] of the way the world works. Now, science is often about how do you find out about things.
Um, so there are two aspects of science. One of them is what is the world like? That's an ontological stance and the complexity view of, of. Science that comes from physics and chemistry, and biology originally is a better fit. I'm arguing with the social and natural world, with the way society works in the same way that Daoism is.
So that's, that's the ontological connection. Then the knowing connection. The epistemological connection is, is really saying that that. That if you want to know, and this is Brian Goodwin's point about health, for example. You use, you have to use a mixture of the hard and the soft, the subjective and the objective, the qualitative and the quantitative.
So that it, in that sense, it, it changes your knowing of the social world becomes something that, that can't just be pinned down to data and analysis and facts in, in, um, in quite that way. So [00:55:00] that's what I mean, um, by, by science, but. One of the things I think people use Taoism to mean, I, I find I pick up, this is, I'm not saying.
I'm not just saying everything flows or go with the flow. I'm not saying that. I'm saying we have to co-create the future flow. We both have to step into it and then we're co-creating it. So it's quite active and it's not saying there's no leadership. For example, or it's not saying, you know, if I join an organization with, with this idea of getting in the flow, I've got to understand the hard stretches in the organization as well as the informal stretches.
And then I've got to work out how things actually happen as opposed to how people pretend they happen or hope they happen. But it, it, it has, it has a hard-edged element to it. And, um, it, it's, uh. You know, I certainly would in my work, you know, be, be saying, well, that's something we can measure, you know, what's the population density?
What's the, the rate of [00:56:00] change of population increase? You know, what, how, how many, um, people have fallen over in this hospital. You know that there's nothing. This is not just going, you know, I'm going to meditate and go with the flow and see what happens. But that is sometimes how it's, it can be characterized that way.
Um,
Andrea Hiott: yes, and it's definitely not that. It's, it's understanding that you have, you can have these patterns that are shared and these things can be very different and very needed in different situations at different times. That's a hard thing for people to, to hold, but I feel like that's, that's the future, right.
Or if we're gonna have a future.
Jean Boulton: Yeah, and, and also it's, it's like if I came along to your family and said, I've analyzed your family and it follows this, it's a, this sort of family, and here's your pack and you just need to do these things and then everything will be perfect, you'll laugh at me. Whereas I.
An organization or a community is only a big family, you know? So there's something we can learn. You know, I can say, well, how did this [00:57:00] town transform itself? Well, I can learn from that, but we're a bit different because we have this history. So it. It creates a different set of questions to ask. I think in, in working, I think a lot of, um, working with, in a more complex way is, is asking questions rather than coming out with, with, you know, this is the answer to your situation.
Andrea Hiott: Yes. And you use the word making a lot and you just brought it up that it's a participatory and engaged activity. I think that's an important aspect too, that you really bring up in the book. And that also relates to what you're saying. It's not just let go and flow. No, it isn't. No, in my view. But in the book, you seem to have a larger, I won't say purpose, but this does seem motivated by care and love.
Mm-hmm. And it is about making new waves. And, um, before we go, maybe we could just speak a bit about love, what that word means to you or care, and if you see that as [00:58:00] how that motivates you or what, what part that plays in, in your work.
Jean Boulton: Well, I, I've, I've perhaps touched on it a a little bit. I, I, I, you know, if you take the view that, that things are connected, you know, that, that in, in some sense, not, not immediately, but, you know, there's a, there's a kind of, you know, we're a bit like ripples on an ocean, you know, there's, there's, there's a kind of connectivity.
Then, you know, then what I, what I do, um. You know, is part of the whole is, is co-creating the future with this idea of, of process. So therefore it matters what I do. It might, it might feel it doesn't matter, but, but actually, you know, we never know, as I was saying earlier, whether we're playing a big part or a little part or, you know, sometimes people have come up to me.
I'm sure they have with your podcast, you know, years later and say, what you said there really changed my [00:59:00] mind, you know, that really got me. And you probably don't even remember saying it, you know, um, but you never know. But, but we are weaving together in this kind of interdependent way, what the future is, which is, you know, a Buddhist view, a Daoist view, and, um, I think comes outta this kind of complexity science.
So, um, it both matters that I. Care about things. Um. Unless, you know, I just want to win, you know, there are, we, we, we can point to people in this world who say, I don't care. I don't care about the future. I don't care about people. You know, you have resources. I want, I want to win. I want to be the biggest president there's ever been, or, you know, whatever it is.
So. It, it, you know, you can contravene this, but, but you will get something that in the end is, is much less resilient and certainly plays havoc with, you know, plays Russian ru roulette with the [01:00:00] future. So I don't want to do that. I, I, I don't, somebody was asking me. You know, how did I, did I find it difficult to have values or what my values would be?
And it's like, well, no, not really. You know, I, I want there to be a, a, a sustainable, just resilient future, um, for, for life on earth, you know, and, and in order to do that, I have to care about it. And if I just care about making more money or winning this argument, or, you know, having more power, that's not going to work.
And I. We're all going to die, and I don't take that with me. You know, my legacy is, is feels much more, I feel much more pleased if I were to have a legacy where I did my own little bit, my own bit of activism, which might be speaking and writing to, to, you know, to help us do the best we can. Even with things not being in a great state in a variety of ways, you know, to help, to help that.
Um. [01:01:00] Help the future, help us to have a future. Um, and so, so that's what I, that's what love means to me. And, and I think, as I was saying earlier, I think through. You know, th through cultivating myself in a, in or trying to, in a variety of ways, compassion becomes more embodied for me than, than an idea. It, it becomes easier.
It is. It isn't like I'm having to decide whether that's in my best interest. It's, it's like love, love flows. I suppose it your heart opens and I think that that can be something you cultivate or not. You can guard your heart and make yourself feel safe or distance or be greedy, or you can do the opposite.
Um, so I think, I think it's a good word and, uh, you know, it, if we can cultivate love, many of, many of the atrocities that we see happening and the selfishness is, would, would be become harder to perpetrate.
Andrea Hiott: And I think [01:02:00] in the same way you've been saying that it's not just some kind of passive thing that we actually make love and we make meaning.
Yeah. And it's, it's, it is all of the stuff we've been talking about. It's not, I. You know, it's not just some easy thing to do.
Jean Boulton: No. It's also, you know, it's about, um, I was talking to somebody earlier today about, um, being, being a bit mindless, um, with someone where I'd corrected some, I'd edited something in, in, and not really, I did it very quickly.
I wasn't really thinking about it, and it had quite an impact on the person for a variety of reasons. Mm-hmm. And I. I felt terrible. I thought, well, that was awful of me. You know, I was doing it quickly. I'm just so used to words. It doesn't hurt me if people all sort my words. I don't, it doesn't matter. For him, it was like a huge, it really upset him.
Mm-hmm. For a variety of reasons, and, and I had to face up to the fact, well, my, my lack of [01:03:00] thought and my sort of. Quite casualness about that had been hurtful. And, you know, I had, I, yeah, so you have to face, uh, yes. I'm, I'm rambling a bit here, I think, but he has No, actually,
Andrea Hiott: I'm really glad you said that.
That's actually very helpful because Yeah, it's, you have to face that
Jean Boulton: yourself. Yeah.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah. And uh, it's, there's two things there. One is that we. We were talking about this as a constant practice and this paying attention. Yeah. Because we don't really realize our own habits and we don't realize the way others see those.
So for you just being direct and Yeah, this paying attention, but just going with it could. Obviously for the student it means something else, but it can be very hard in the moment to realize this, to pay attention, to think about all of that when you have a million other things you need to be doing. But that is the practice, isn't it?
Just Yes,
Jean Boulton: and, and sometimes noticing, I, I was saying to [01:04:00] this person because I'd had a, an in an incident with a neighbor about wanting them to cut their tree. Shorter and they didn't want to. And I can be really persistent. I, I don't like, I don't give up easily, which is a good thing sometimes, you know, I keep going and other times it isn't.
And she said to me, well. Maybe the tree mattered to them, and it's like, I'm so, I'm so into, well, you know, it's too, you know, it's cutting my light, you know, and it's like, I don't, if you put yourself in the other position, you go, no. Yes. Well, maybe, maybe they do feel differently about the tree, then you can kind of be, you could be more relational in it.
And it's this split sometimes between, this is, this is logical, your tree's too high, I've got right on my side, cut your tree down. Doesn't get you anywhere. But, but it, it's when you see that, you think, oh dear, you know, I, I, here I am again. You know, with, with upon, um, trying to put, you know, trying to make something happen, which, you know, in a, in a different context, this is, it's [01:05:00] all about context is something that's good.
You know, I will stand my ground sometimes when, you know, or keep pushing. But it's, it's, it is a practice and it's, it's a comp, it's paradoxical and complex. There's not one right answer. It will be, it depends on the situation, but it's being, you know, some people go, oh, I can't be bothered with that. But through that minutia, and I think this is something that, that's PGA Jean sort of complexity emphasizes it's, it's the minutia.
It's sometimes the subtleness that actually creates the shift in society or in. In the change in the community. It's not the logical big thing, it's the, it's the moment that matters Sometimes. Sometimes things really matter.
Andrea Hiott: Yes. And I think these small things like what you're talking about, I know you said you think you're rambling, but actually I think this is incredibly important because it is these small moments that actually do make big changes and someone understanding, just hearing you say that you could take.
Take in the [01:06:00] situation, either the tree or the the student thing differently. Just being able to hold that I think can help people, because we do often think we have, we're either right or wrong, or we have to defend our, you know, no, I'm right about the tree. Or, well, yeah, he should just be tougher. He's just gotta deal with criticism.
Sometimes people go into those roles just because we do have this either or. Kind of reaction. So, and a lot of what you're writing in the book about that process is helping us hold that space long enough to not take it personally and just say, oh yeah, maybe they do care about the tree. Yes. Um, that's a very small thing, but I would say it actually, once you can do that adds to your quality of life immeasurably.
If you can be okay with yourself to do that, would, would you agree?
Jean Boulton: Yeah. Yes, yes. No, no, no. Definitely. Um, and, and, and if. You know, a a if we're all, you know, in, in a variety of ways, and all the people, you know, I was all, [01:07:00] not all the people, but you know, these, these kind of complex scientific worldviews, you know, for many people are trying to, to make the world a better place.
But it, it is this kind of. You know Right. Brain more interwoven view that, that tells you to do that? Well, it's, it's, it's marrying the two always. So there are, there are facts and, and, uh, I, I'm not denying that. And, um, but, but it's, how do you. How do you cultivate both at the same time? You know, some of the developmental models that, that, it's why I don't like to think of complexity as a thinking practice.
I think, I think being able to embrace complexity, it requires a kind of bigger perspective. it's kind of looking, looking wider and longer being able to integrate disparate ideas. It's being able to hold the heart and the mind together. You know, it's a, it's, it's a. I'm not saying we've all got to be able to do that all, all the time, but that's what we're, that is [01:08:00] what we're, we're aiming for.
And, and it holds up that, that, that vision for us. Whereas often in organizations we go, just do what you tell. Just fill in this form, you know, this is the best method. Teach this way. You know, we'll measure your success in this way. So we, we kind of dumb down people into a kind of mechanical process and they leave their humanity at the door.
And, you know, do all these kind of slightly meaningless tasks and then go back. Whereas this, this vision of a, of a more, you know, relational complex heart mind sort of world, you know, is some, is something that, that can aspire us to move towards them. I think and is more like the world is, you know, it, it, it creates greater effectiveness if we embrace that complexity.
Not by just going it's complex, but by understanding the nature of that complexity, this, this idea of patterning and paradox and flow. it, it equips me with a different kind of frame in which to, to [01:09:00] hone my, my behaviors in, you know, to be effective in the world.
Andrea Hiott: Yes. And I do think that is that space of feeling, the compassion that you were talking about, where you do start to live in a different way.
And it can be hard to put that into words or explain. it can also be hard not to see someone being a bully who's in a place of power and think that's the way you have to always do it. But when you're actually living as the bully, it's a very d. It's not a very nice reality. It's not, it's nothing like living in that place of compassion, but you can only know it if you experience it.
And sometimes the optics confuse us, don't they? Yeah, definitely. Did you have any, uh, experience of love or anything about love that you would like to share with anyone? Um. Anything that comes to mind or you, you brought up your parents a few times and I don't, I don't know if I really followed through on that, but just anything about any experience of love that I
Jean Boulton: think [01:10:00] sometimes there can be tiny little acts when acts of kindness that that makes such a difference to people.
So it, it's not, it's not always in the big, it's, it's sometimes. I, I remember a story, um, somebody once told me about a little boy. Um, at a, at a concert and his parents were kind of getting cross with him 'cause he was not really enjoying it and fidgeting and they were being quite strict with him and, and, and so on.
And, um, and my friend was sitting apparently behind him and he was looking quite lost. You know, he obviously wasn't very happy, you know, he was, there was a loss of criticism and she started making faces at him and made him laugh. And you can see that as a little act of resistance to. The, the over dominance of, of, or control of his parents.
You know, he just was seen by her in that moment. And I, I [01:11:00] can think of tiny moments like that in my life where something's really, you know, somebody's noticed something or responded to something in me that I hardly knew was there, but made all the difference. So I think, I think, you know, love can be in the cracks as well as just some, some sort of big idea and um, and can make all the difference.
Yeah.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I think actually it is in the cracks when I look back too. Sometimes the love might be someone at the supermarket who happened to notice something and say something which you, for remember for the rest of your life, even though you'll never see those people again.
Jean Boulton: Yes, completely.
Andrea Hiott: Well Jean, it's just been wonderful and I love your book and there's so much in there that we didn't get to Of course.
But I appreciate you sharing this time with me and I appreciate your book. Is there anything before we go that you wanna add or say, or.
Jean Boulton: Um, no, I've, I've enjoyed, um, talking about it. It, I, I, it's, it's vulnerable making because if you are prepared to share who you really are, you know, um, uh, [01:12:00] it, it's, it's, um, you know, it's a big thing and, and, you know, thank you for the kind of questions you've asked and how you've held it.
You've, you, you know, you've, you've made it very easy to open up and talk about these things, and I feel like I've, um, you know, been able, you know, been able to. Express my truth in, in a way. So thank you very much. I've enjoyed it. Thank you
Andrea Hiott: for saying that. And thank you for going there with me because I, I am sure that someone will hear it and need it somewhere, and even if it's only one person as we've been talking about Yeah, more love gets in through the cracks.
So
Jean Boulton: yeah.
Andrea Hiott: And thank you for everything.
Jean Boulton: Okay, thank you.
Andrea Hiott: All right. Be well.
Jean Boulton: Bye.