Holism with Focus
A guide to perceiving patterns through the combined view of structures and flows.
We understand patterns by bringing both structures and flows into view. Structures are the stable things that configure flows — the parts we tend to see easily. Flows are the processes that sustain those structures and change them over time — usually less visible.
Weather, trees, mountains, and settlements all reveal the interplay between structure and process across very different timescales. In the same way, the patterns of shared life change at both short and long timescales: from fashions, to neighbourhoods, to entire civilisations.
When we look at structures, we are seeing only one part of the picture. By attending to flows, we can work outward and further, gaining a holistic view. We call the combination of these two modes of perception “holism with focus.”
To understand the first horizon, we need to tune our perception to the flows that sustain the present patterns, and the timescales over which they operate. The third horizon will emerge from new processes that gradually grow and build an expanding range of social patterns to maintain them.
Exercise
Choose a building in your local area that has existed for a long time.
Think back to the time it was built. Identify the activities that brought it into being and the ways it configured life around it. Sketch these as a network of interactions inside and around the building.
Trace how these activities have changed from the time it was built up to the present day. Which activities have disappeared? Which new ones have emerged?
Now step out into the present. Starting from the building as your focal point, trace the flows of activity across time and space. Create a sketch that shows both the evolving structure and the flows that sustain it today.
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