Not One, Not Two: Star Cybernetics to Constellation Cognition
Andrea Hiott: 📍 What if everything you thought was an either or was actually a doorway, not this or that? Not one, not two, but a whole 📍 constellation is a word I like to say. Just waiting to be discovered. So there's a scientist and a philosopher who you've probably heard me talk about, 📍 and his name is Francisco Varela And there was a time when he was hiding during a coup and bullets were whistling past his window or all around him.
he had to walk out on the street in the middle of all this. And his life was literally being threatened and everything he thought was normal was sort of falling around, most metaphorically and sort of literally in a way. And it was in that moment that he had a sort of change or epiphany, at least as I see it.
And, and as he expresses it in an audio file, which I'll, I'll link here. but he had this change in the way he understands reality itself. it's a kind of change I've also had, which I talk about as holding paradox, which can sound simple, but it's actually maybe the hardest thing we do. The hardest skill, the hardest practice, the hardest way of being in the world, and also the most rewarding.
It really is a portal into another way of being. Because it's not a, it's not a problem. The paradox. It's something like a portal. I really wanna get that across. The paradox is the portal not the problem. It's something to walk through. But we live in a world of opposites, or at least we have grown up, a lot of us being told that we live in a world of opposites.
So you have the left versus the right, science versus spirituality. Individual versus the collective, us versus them. You can go on and on like this and, uh, I think it's just about the most familiar thing to us and something a lot of people would say is just true. Uh, we've been taught that there's, you know, you pick a side and then you move towards the goal from that side. 📍
You try to resolve the tension. You try to win. You try to, you know, make sure your side is better than the other, or your side lasts, or prove that your side is right and the other is wrong, and so on and so forth. So there's this always this tension that we're trying to solve. But what if that's a trap or what if we've gotten to a point now where it's a trap?
Maybe it was really wonderful for a while for us to come into our awareness through these contrasts. maybe that was really helpful in some way. Of course, there was a lot of harm in it too, but maybe there was something really wonderful about it. But now we don't have to give up all of that. But we can see it differently.
It might have, it might be that if we keep trying to push everything into these categories, these either or categories. If we keep trying to push everything into these either or categories, it might be that we lose actually, um, what we've gained and what we've kind of gone through all that to be able to realize, which is our sensuality, our connection, our ability to redefine what it means to be here and what a self is, 📍 and how, how we can.
Really move forward together. So this Chilean neuroscientist and philosopher named Francisco that I often talk about wrote a paper. It's a pretty hard paper. It's called not one, not two. I'll also link to it. And it's not just academic 📍 theory, it's, I think of it as sort of written in it, you know, with his life in a way, during this moment in Chile.
And what he was really thinking of, or what he was trying to solve, I guess, or not solve, I shouldn't say solve, but what he was. Holding. The tension he was holding is this notion of mind, body, of that we have a body, but then we also have this mind that seems not to be part of our body. It seems something special living in that body.
So this is another 📍 one of those dichotomies or things we've been trying to solve forever, especially as philosophers. And often there's two kind of traditional answers. Something called dualism, which says the mind and body are two separate things, or monism, which says 📍 📍 everything's just one thing and it's all matter, or it's all consciousness or it's all whatever, you know, there's a lot of different versions of that, and that, again, has been really quite helpful I think, uh, for us to come into awareness, just that we are conscious and that we are, sensual beings.
It is actually been kind of wonderful and there's so much wonderful philosophy on both sides of those dualism, monism, and all their many versions, and I think it will always be wonderful to read that. But what if we read it with a different idea in mind, not to try to solve it or figure out which one is the best one, but rather to hold the tensions that they.
Open us to when they're in communication. I think that's what Ello was trying to do with this paper. 📍 Not one, not two. This kind of star cybernetics idea. at least that's how I've put it in my notes. you know, I'm always talking about constellations and networks and instead of a hierarchy, with something at the top.
Where everything is sort of flat, you know, or where you have to make one thing into the other. I'm thinking about a constellation, constellation cybernetics, uh, nodes connected to other nodes, creating patterns, and those patterns themselves reveal and create new patterns. So actually there's no node at all.
It's all dynamic, and yet we model it that way. So when you chop any of these kind of levels of this network, then you're making a distinction. You're drawing a boundary, you're saying this is separate from that. So you don't really, um, find like fundamental building blocks there. You know, you find more networks.
So if you, if you keep chopping, you just get more trees in the way more things sprout. Trees within trees within trees. it's like, uh, when you try to say one side is right and the other is wrong, what what happens? I mean, if you look at any situation right now going on in our normal life, it becomes more fractal, more separate. it's not that we ever resolve it, but instead we end up creating ever new versions of people who have ever new ways about these ideas.
📍 So we have this idea that we're gonna kind of solve it and make it very neat and tidy, and one side will win. But what we really do is C, create more and more divisions. But it's also just the way we see it, because it's not that we, those don't have to be more and more divisions. They could just be more and more exciting ways to discover something like ways into what we thought was two dimensional or flat.
So this idea that it's not one and it's not two, it's a process of ongoing. Never endingness. That's very hard to get our head around. But often when we say it's one, we think there's an end and a beginning, and we can find the right thing, and it all will always be that way. But this isn't actually what, what we live within or what we are or what any of this is. 📍
All this blooming, buzzing, ongoingness, um. As William James, I think put it, uh, is not beginning or ending. It's, it's something else that we're still trying to figure out how to put words on. And it's not one thing, it's not two things, it's not three. So somehow you have to hold that tension of it being all one in the sense of there's no beginning or end and you can't get out of it.
And from any one point you can get to any other point somehow, even if it might take a long time. So it's all connected, it's all relational, and yet there's no end to it. So it's not something floating that you just are gonna suddenly completely explore and understand and be done with it and find the right answer.
Sorry, at the end of the day, my voice is already gone when I try to do these for you. But thanks for putting up with it. Yeah. So what was I saying? So instead of that mindset where we try to solve one thing into the other, or we look for what's the right thing and then we're just gonna freeze it, we understand all this is always changing.
Everything we do changes it. And that means that like we're never gonna get to the end of it. It's never one thing, it's always one thing and two things, and not one and not two. That's holding the paradox. It's not trying to solve this, and it's not saying that sometimes thinking of everything at one as one isn't important.
Actually, it's really important to think th think that way of wholeness, right? That's another kind of beautiful word that maybe doesn't necessarily have to have a beginning or end. And at the same time, differentiation difference, all that's in there too. It's, it's also all that, and it's also all changing.
So we're not trying to decide between these as we would do with dualism and monism, for example, or, you know, so many other debates that we have. Instead, we're holding this. We're, we're, we're learning how to be the space that's holding this live in this tension. I mean, you're an individual, but you're also part of something, maybe a family or a group, or a society or a nation, whatever.
And you know, you, you can't be the individual without whatever that family is that you came out of or that society around you. that there is something that you call a society, gives you the idea that you're something like an individual. at the same time that society doesn't exist without all of us individuals.
these are co-creating each other and they're. Neither one or the other at any one time. We are always co-creating all of those. And even those terms are just terms that we're trying to give to certain regularities that exist in the world. So, you know, you can give it as sales to cells maintains their boundaries, but they're also processes that are constantly in exchange. 📍
You know, so a cell, because of its relationship to the whole organism. is that organism in a way, and the organism is that cell, but they're never you. You can't reduce one into the other. You can't say they're the same thing. And to try to do that would just be pointless in a way. they exist because of each other, but we could also complete, like think of it in a completely different way.
If we wanted to think about what society is, for example. Relative to a cell than we would be looking at it a different way. So the point is like, we're making these ways to look at it. We're thinking through it, but, uh, what vare called the logic of dualities, where we think every poll in a duality, every opposite, contains and requires some kind of compliment.
This isn't to be resolved. It's not one thing. It's to be understood through its patterns of interaction, which as we understand them change. So that's holding this tension, right, of everything is not one and not two. That's different than saying everything is one and everything is two, because then you've kind of set things you, you've let the tension be resolved.
But this is about holding the tension of all of these things, these dancers of mind and body, self, and other chaos and order even, you know, what you might think of as something that's your enemy. It's actually a dance, an ongoing conversation. And when you hold that tension and, and that space, you can start to dance it or dance as it, and there's a kind of agency there of moving it in a direction that might be healthier or more communicative, more sensual, more loving, um, or more in touch with that, what that is, which I think of as love, but didn't come to this insight, just like sitting around thinking about it. 📍
I mean, he was. Actually at the time, he sort of had this epiphany, um, which I call not one, not two epiphany, but I, I, I don't know if he would've said it was an epiphany, but he does talk about it in that way in some of his lectures. So, but in a really personal one, I think the only one that he ever really talks about it personally, he talks about hiding in a room, listening to machine gun fire, like wondering if the next bullet would have his name on it.
📍 And that was in 1970 in Chile You know, kind of between the mountains and seas in this country that's so poetic and sophisticated 500,000 people were sort of pouring into the streets and, jumping around for two hours straight. And, um, it was this tremendous, notion of hope for Varela. Everything felt possible. But then over the years, all of that turned into what seemed like its opposite because the country split in two.
Like literally, I mean, you, you, this, this idea of opposites was so, um. Present for him. He talks about going to the newsstand and you know, one paper would say it's raining and the other paper would say it's not raining, and you just couldn't it was just word against word, that you just can't agree on anything. It's, you know, not even the time of the day, not even the color of the sky, because the whole point is that you're supposed to have your oppo oppositional view. And this polarity of right versus wrong became like a defining factor of individual lives and, uh, boundaries and territories.
And all of that sort of became very rigid and hard, and it was a time of confusion. It always is. Anytime things seem polarized, it's actually a sign of really deep confusion of people in a lot of pain, of people going to extremes because they can't sit alone in a room. Uh, we all can understand this and I think we can see it in different ways, throughout history, So September 11th, 1970 3, 6 30 in the morning. as Ella says he was taking his daughter to nursery school and the radio kept saying it's raining. And he was like, why is it saying it's raining? 'cause it's not raining. It wasn't raining. And he was like, these guys are crazy, or whatever. And as he was putting his daughter into the car, his neighbor comes running across the street and she says.
Don't, you know, the coup has begun. So actually this whole thing that it's raining was like a sign that when they heard it on the radio, they were supposed to know, oh, some kind of like the coup had begun. But, um, half the radio stations had been taken by the army and so they were broadcasting this.
it was just a sign that it was gonna be dangerous, and Varela kind of put his family in safety. And then he had to go meet his colleagues at the university and they were supposed to sort of wait there for instructions and. By 10 30, you know, all the radio stations were taken over and there were tanks rolling down the streets and military planes flying overhead.
📍 we're all sitting where we're supposed to be. Uh, waiting for the instructions to do whatever can be done that no instructions come. We all sit there, uh, with the same sense of impending doom, not believing that this is happening.
The war is still an abstract thought. Still there's something that is not really happening. Um, we have never had a war in Chile before. I've never seen a war. Nobody has ever seen it army on the streets before. Nobody have ever seen the police be anything except, you know, very nice, polite people. So there is no frame of reference.
This is abstract.
So it's 10 30 in the morning and. Most of the radio stations except the one are already taken by the army. And I begin to see tanks rolling down the streets and I begin to see wagons loaded with soldiers running down the street. And we see, begin to see the airplanes, the war airplanes flying over the city.
And you begin to recognize that funny sound of the submachine guns still distant from where I am.
And it is 11 o'clock in the morning. And we know that every faction in the army has turned against the government or those who haven't have been isolated, that the precedent has decided not to surrender and to stay in the presidential palace, which, and they give him. An ultimatum before bombing it. So we know that there is no way back that this is no game.
Uh, the bullets are already swinging over your head so that you know that the war is an abstract. It's, it has a very concrete sound to it, which is that funny whistle of the bullet, um, that you can't locate except after it's gone. And, uh, still we don't have any instructions. So the local leader decides that we are to distribute in different places and hide out until we receive instructions.
So I go with four other friends to the place in which we're going to hide out and wait. And until the moment to do something comes and we must walk all. 20 blocks from where we are to where we ought to go. And as I walk out, the reality of the war begins, becomes already vivid.
And that's when he was kind of in the midst of this, and no matter, let's not talk about politics and get into all that, but he was in this moment of danger and that, and also this moment that had been created from this absolute kind of.
Belief in opposites and contrasts and, um, this, you know, go to the very extreme in your belief of the opposing view, uh, or, or that you had to solve this, that you had to win, that your side was right, and that the world worked like this, that this was really true. There was one truth and everything needed to be, um, solved in that way.
Uh, so he was. With his friends and they were in this hiding place and. They had to walk, I think, to another place and he saw a tank bulldoze, a factory wall, 20 people with weapons, or I'm not sure how many people, but a lot of people. And he could hear the guns and blocks away. There was a man at an intersection, I think it was like a really young soldier, maybe 18, 19 years old.
And he talks about he had this really sweet face from a certain area of the country that, that he remembered and liked a lot and he saw this person, He Just like let go. Right? Because you know, when you're at that extreme, then it's like, oh, okay, well you just keep going and that's what you're supposed to do. And um, Illa had this realization then like, okay, if I had met that guy in a bar like two months ago, the soldier with the sweet face, we probably would've had like a great conversation, you know, and I would've liked him.
And now. I don't recognize him anymore. Like when he saw his face, he saw as not the same guy as actually that sweet guy in that face. He was just living as the opposition in the polarization, which can happen to any of us, um, no matter what side or whatever we're on. When we buy into this idea of oppositions being not just our way to come into realization, but.
Actually something that we have to become because it's a, it's a deadening. It's a hardening, it's a way out of life. It's not the portal into life. You know, you have a moment where you can see these contrasts and take the portal into life and that, that, that's beautiful. Right? And that's about. Holding strong to what you know is right.
It's not, this isn't about like being passive, by the way, which can sound like that sometimes. Not at all. It's about what are you standing with and is it the space that's holding life or is it some kind of thing that's been cut off and out of that, and you've been told is one side. That you have to fight for. 📍
That's the difference. We stand very strong for things, and we all need to stand strong for different things, but we're standing in the space holding opposition, not as the opposition that's holding paradox. 📍 That's not one, not two. And it's really hard to do and also to even understand what I'm saying.
And that's why I've done like 70 videos about this and conversations about this and books about this. And I will keep doing it because I really feel it's so, so important, um, for how you feel, how you are who you are, what what is possible for you, what you give to this world, because you all have something to give every single one of you.
Um, Vall had something to give and, and exactly the same way you do too. So anyway, back to Illa, which you should listen to his story of this, because I'm just re kind of recounting it from my, my memory. Because this is, uh, all about memory, this show too. And also because I have been writing a book about him and you know, you've Evan Thompson and all that, all those inspirations.
But anyway, so Ella goes through this, right? He sees this guy who could have been his friend become an opposite, right? Like, turn into this kind of person who just can shoot someone with 20 bullets. That night, while the bullets are still sort of echoing through Santiago and the country seems to be falling apart, um, because of this crazy opposition that's now breaking, cracking the country.
He sits down and has to write something. He's, he just sits down in this like little space and he writes, uh, something called the Logic of Paradise He describes it as like, um, the ground was being pulled out from under him. That's how he felt when he was writing. I really can feel this, right? I I maybe all of us can.
When something happens and the reality you thought was there, suddenly you see it never was what you thought. And you don't have anything left to hold onto. And in that comes a strange clarity. Actually emergencies do this. And he was in an emergency, but he, he, he paused, he held this tension and he could literally see how the whole thing wasn't him.
And it wasn't not him and it wasn't here. And it wasn't not here. It was this ongoing larger. ongoingness without ending and without beginning. This collective process that he was in and as, and becoming aware of as, so he could literally like see how this, how he could have been in the army or he could have been that 19-year-old boy or you know, from any one position in this, you could have.
Gotten to any other, it just is a matter of what, what path you had been walking to where you were in this position when that, when everything cracked. So, speaking of cracks, I mean he, it sounds almost like he was having a breakdown, but it was a breakthrough. It was understanding all the positions, all his opinions, and all the stuff he might have thought about, the government and the position and opposition and all the stuff that really did matter a lot to him.
The workers, the military, all the stuff. They weren't separate. Truths fighting for dominance. They actually couldn't be, there wasn't a way for there to be two things that were fighting and one would solve or resolve the other because there's no beginning or end. There's no one, there's no two. It's all connected.
So you actually, it's just not possible to do what so many of us try to do when we try, when we become polarized and we fight. And that's why those tensions get so heightened and we almost lose touch with our bodies, um, or our realities or everything that matters because we're literally trying to force something into a position that can never be in.
So these are all parts of a constellation or. An ongoing, ever moving, ever changing livingness and all that, violence and war and por polarity. It's a bit like, um, people, it's a, it's a little bit like how we might think we are our thoughts or we are our identities, or we are whatever, anything, and, and we kind of know that's not true.
I mean, we can't. Define our whole life by anything. Uh, and yet, how do we hold all that? It's really hard. It's really overwhelming, and this was a kind of revelation that Barilla had, that there's not a single truth. There's not a winning side, there's not a correct position. You don't ever resolve one position into another one.
at the same time, we can learn what really is real and important for us, and we can stand as it. Not in opposition, but standing as what that is. And this is the way that that actually becomes more of itself and actually gives and grows and lives. It's not by fighting something it thinks is its opposite.
So that's a really big thing to say. I realize it's not that both sides are right. That's not the message here. It's not moral relativism. It's not also that we don't, that we're passive and we don't fight for anything. That is not what I'm saying and that is not the epiphany that he had. It's that in holding the tension, you become finally, actually.
Strong enough and to be and stand for what you know is real. And, and doing that you are differentiated from others, but you're not in opposition to them. And it's not just one, two sides. It's a multiplicity. It's a whole amazing, miraculously wonderful exploration just opening up for you there. And, um, a dance right.
📍 yeah, I think maybe that's enough of this for today. But I do wanna talk about love because I really think that that's 📍 the realization and the feeling, it's the word we use for it at least. Uh, of that, what comes when you're able to hold that tension and, and the tension leaves you? You are the tension and therefore you don't feel it anymore.
It's, that's what's holding the constellation, the love. And you realize even the constellation is a million other constellations, but it's all in this movement, uh, of love. And it's not sentimental. It's not like, oh, everything's great. Everything's fine, nobody's getting hurt. And of course not. It's, it's a recognition of yourself as worthy and of others as worthy.
And it's a, it's a different, you don't wanna destroy in that place. You don't wanna tear everything up. 'cause you, you're excited, you're motivated that it can all change. Like it's this, this amazing kaleidoscopic movement that by, by being in that love and feeling it, you become a way for it to change. And you experience that and it.
It's better than any drug trip. It's better than any, uh, wonderful movie or incredible book. All that is, is really important in giving us a taste of it, but living it, living it is actually what we're all trying to learn how to do and become strong enough to do so. I know you might be thinking, oh, how beautiful Andrea, but you know, what about real problems?
Like all these real problems that we have, I could list a hundred of them Yes, I understand. And um, you know, I understand why people think they have to find an answer and fight for it and all of that, but when you think of, when you think in terms of not one and not two. I really mean it, and I've experienced it.
You stop thinking through those oppositions and something else becomes possible. You see a different pattern. You don't lose sight of the pattern. You, you lose you, you become able to touch and smell and hear and feel it and see that there's many, many, many layers and, and dimensions to it. So. You don't get attached to rightness and wrongness because it's boring, frankly.
and at the same time, you have a lot of motivation and a lot that of strength, and that's moving towards something. It's not passive.
📍 So this is the idea of holding paradox or of not one, not two, at least as I read Vir. In this way, it's a kind of opening, it's a kind of transformation that's possible. logic of paradise, which becomes sort of a basis for not one, not two, this amazing dynamic process that I'm waking up as part of something like that. 📍 So it's not oneness. That's how we find each other. And yeah, I mean, right now we're not one and we're not two, and yet we are differentiated and distinct and maybe even on different parts of the planet.
We're part of something. We're connected and we're creating something together, and I hope we can feel love and do it with and from love. So thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. And yeah, that was my diary for today.