This Ignite (5 mins, 15 secs per slide - GO!) was presented at the Web of Change Conference 2013, at Balcones Springs just outside of Austin, TX. Huge thanks to the WOCMob for welcoming this errant pitch! In response to my opening statement "I’m curious why orgs and people fiercely protect outrageous poisonous bullshit that will kill them, while resisting change that is blatantly obviously healthy and liberating.", I trace an origin of 'Things' - conceptual, biological, then psychological - asserting that ego is a 'homeostatic' entity. I propose that ego is built up by 'habits' cycling around core desires, and that addiction reifies into a 'cyclostatic' resistance to change. Addiction is self-generating and delusional, both of which are relatively good descriptions of many orgs resistant to, for example, climate change science. Addictive structures, functioning in denial, are also exceedingly resistant to love, whose nature is revelatory. Situations where love directly encounters addiction are typically 'apocalyptic'.

1. Homeostasis, Change, Addiction & Love
I’m curious why orgs and people fiercely protect outrageous
poisonous bullshit that will kill them, while resisting change that is
blatantly obviously healthy and liberating.
- So we’ll start from before there was anything.

2. Nothing
Taoists are good at nothing:
Chuang Tzu said: “There was a beginning. There was a beginning before
that beginning. There was a beginning previous to that beginning before
there was the beginning.... Now I have said what I have said, but I don’t
know whether what I have said will really mean anything at all.”
Thanks Chuang.
Most helpful.

3. First Things
Try another Taoist, Lao Tzu:
- “The Tao begets the One,
The One begets the two,
The two begets the three and
The three begets the ten thousand things.”
Fractal emergence – thanks Lao Tzu!
Fantasy Tree by ‘Little Stick’

4. Things
Alfred North Whitehead called ‘Things’ ‘spatio-temporal unities’.
Cohesive evolving entities with a beginning and end, and an inside and out...

5. Living Things – Homeostasis & Paradise
Biologists use the term ‘homeostasis’ to describe any process that living things use to maintain
internal stability. ‘Homeo’ means ‘same’, and ‘stasis’ means ‘state’.
‘Paradise’ is a word used to describe an original ideal stable state. ‘Para’ means ‘around’, and
‘daeza’ means ‘wall’.
‘Circle of Angels’ : illustration for Dante’s Paradiso – Gustav Dore

6. Change & Evolution
Shit happens
Change is the only constant
Heraclitus said “You can’t step into the same river twice.”
You are all rivers.

7. Disturbances & Tension
Do not disturb.
Paradise is nice.
A random perturbation is a disturbance that an entity resists, survives, and returns to it’s original state.
A structural perturbation requires that it completely change its identity to survive.
Stressful.
Raleigh-Taylor Instability – Athena 3D in Fortran 95

8. Conscious Things - Humans
Humans, the geeks of the animal kingdom, have opposable thumbs + a massive frontal lobe
with which they evolved consciousness whose attributes include
strategy, imagination, language, alienation and deception.
Humans are the only species that can bullshit.
Opposable Thumbs – thop55

9. Human Homeostasis
Human consciousness, or ego, is a ‘thing’ which we may value above our physical survival.
Humans will die for a cause, a belief or an idea.
Sometimes they even kill themselves because they can’t stand all the bullshit.
Matrix Reloaded – The Wachowski Brothers

10. “With our thoughts we make the world.”
Buddha said
“With our thoughts we make the world”.
Humans create imaginary realities that are
homeostatic.
Note however that Banksy’s Buddha has a
neck brace.
Our internal reality doesn’t always
correspond with other realities.
Injured Buddha - Banksy

11. Samsara/Circles/Cycles/Circus
Samsara is the polarity to nirvana - birth death rebirth cycle whose focal point is your desire.
Humans desire the same things over and over, and this cyclical pattern reinforces a notion of identity.
Cycling round the same desire reinforces ego.
Step right up.

12. Reels & Momentum
Round and round where it stops nobody knows.
I worked in a steel cable factory. Once spinning on a good spindle, a 40 ton
steel cable reel can be kept spinning with a flick of the hand.

13. Habits
You wear your habits.
She’s wearing her habit.
Habitat, habitation.
The French “Ou habillez-vous?” means ‘where do you live?’
With our habits we make our world.

14. PERCEPTION & MANIFESTATION
(Where’s the Beer Store)
I was drinking so much that in my mind
beer stores were gigantic. They dwarfed
churches.
Addiction creates perceptual
illusions, and it determines value
systems.

15. Addiction
We’re all addicted to something that takes the pain away.
Addiction is a destructive habit, a sick cycle, a feedback loop, that is very painful.
We’re all addicted to something that takes the pain away.

16. Addictive Organisations
The cycle of hunger, acquisition and relief creates homeostatic
addictive organizations, nation-states and whole civilizations
characterized by tyranny, denial and paranoia.

17. Cyclostasis
‘Homeo’ means ‘same’
and ‘stasis’ means ‘static’.
This is a good description
of things that have died.
Addictive systems are
cyclostatic.
Merry-go-round anyone?

18. Love
I’m defining love as the most intelligent evolutionary strategy possible.
An intrinsic drive towards liberation, freedom from addiction.
Love’s in the gaps between cycles.
Love cracks the homeostatic, and kicks the habits...
Don’t kick nuns though. That’s not nice.

19. Love & Apocalypse
Apocalypse: ‘apo’ means ‘out from’ and ‘kaluptein’ means ‘cover’.
It just means ‘uncovering’.
Revelation is an intrinsic characteristic of love, so love is experienced as catastrophic by
paranoid systems in denial.
No denying....
Martin Luther King & Oscar Romero: Westminster Abbey

20. Thanks from the heart of my bottom!!