U Theory

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Part 2 – Into the Silence:
Chapter 6 – An Emerging Understanding: The U Theory
& Chapter 7 – The Eye of the Needle: Letting Go and Letting Come

In this section we are introduced to a concept the authors call U Theory – a framework for a new process of thinking. They have drawn a diagram, in the shape of a U, representing the path that the great thinkers take:
1) (At the top, left) “Sensing”: “‘observe, observe, observe’ – become one with the world”;
2) (Down to the bottom of the U) “Presencing”: “‘retreat, and reflect” – allow inner knowing to emerge”;
3) (Up again, top right) “Realizing”: “‘act swiftly, with a natural flow’” (88).

The key seems to be in the ‘presencing’ step, which they say, “constitutes a third type of seeing, beyond seeing external reality and beyond even seeing from within the living whole” (90). But the authors go even further, clearly seeing this stage as a spiritual state of being: “The bottom of the U is where, in Joseph’s words, you discover ‘who you really are as a servant or steward for what’s needed in the world” (91). In many ways, this is not unlike meditation: “We choose the term ‘presencing’ to describe this state because it is about becoming totally present – to the larger space or field around us, to an expanded sense of self, and, ultimately, to what is emerging through us” (91); “Getting to the ‘different place’ that allows presencing to occur begins as we develop a capacity to let go and surrender our perceived need to control”; and “The seeds for this transformation lie in seeing our reality more clearly, without preconceptions and judgments” (131).
(96).

The authors, indeed, link this practice with Buddhist tradition: “Developing a capacity to let go allows us to be open to what is emerging and to practice what Buddhism and other meditative traditions call ‘nonattachment.’ In Buddhist theory, two Sanskrit terms, (96) vitarka and vicara, are used to describe the subtle attachments of mind. Vitarka characterizes the state of ‘seeking,’ when our attention is attached to what we’re trying to make happen. Vicara characterizes the state of ‘watching,’ when, even though we’re not trying to force something to happen, we’re still attached to an outcome we are waiting for. With either, our mental attachment makes us blind or resistant to other aspects of what is happening right now. Overcoming the traps of vitarka and vicara requires continual letting go” (97).

The point of this U trajectory is not to be spiritual, per se, but to see results. The authors argue that engaging in what amounts to a spiritual process will lead to better outcomes. The difference, if we were to make an analogy to scientists: “‘most scientists take existing frameworks and overlay them onto some situation,’ while ‘first-rate ones sit back and study the situation from many, many angles and then ask, ‘What’s fundamentally going on here?’” (85). And while the latter are not any more intelligent than the former, they are able to make the real breakthroughs. Eleanor Rosch, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of California at Berkeley talks about the need for all science to be done with the “‘mind of wisdom’” (98). And she sees this as an almost artistic outlook: “Great artists naturally operate from this other level and always have.’ This ‘other level’ entails a different sort of knowing, what is called in Tibetan Buddhism ‘wisdom awareness.’” (98). Rosch suggests that the trick is in recognizing that “‘mind and world are not separate’” (98), as Buddhism teaches.

Now, psychologists are not the most receptive audience when it comes to pithy spiritual sayings; so in terms that are more palpable for the academics, Rosch has come up with two categories of knowing: ‘primary knowing’ and ‘analytic knowing.’ The former, “arises by means of ‘interconnected (98) wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts and by means of timeless, direct, presentation’ rather than through stored ‘re-presentation.’ ‘Such knowing is open rather than determinate, and a sense of unconditional value, rather than conditional usefulness, is an inherent part of the act of knowing itself,’ said Rosch. Acting from such awareness is ‘spontaneous, rather than the result of decision making,’ and it is ‘compassionate… since it is based on wholes larger than the self’” (99). And:

…all these attributes – timeless, direct, spontaneous, open, unconditional value, and compassionate – go together as one thing. That one thing is what some in Tibetan Buddhism call ‘the natural state’ and what Taoism calls ‘the Source’ (99).

Primary knowing has also been described as tapping into a field of knowledge. The authors again draw on Buddhist teaching: “Tibetan Buddhism talks about emptiness, luminosity, and the knowing capacity as inseparable. That knowing capacity actually is the field knowing itself, in a sense, or this larger context knowing itself’” (99).

Of course, we do not tend to operate on this plane. And furthermore, our technology is beating the capacity to reach that plane right out of us. As the authors say matter-of-factly, “The problem is that most of us have spent our lives immersed in analytic knowing, with its dualistic separation of subject (‘I’) and object (‘it’). There’s nothing wrong with analytic knowing. It’s useful and appropriate for many activities – for example, for interacting with machines. But if it’s our only way of knowing, we’ll tend to apply it in all situations” (99). To me this signals a potential point of intervention, though I hardly know yet what this means in terms of new design concepts. Can we develop technologies that are not built on – and thereby reinforce – this dualistic thinking? My initial reaction is that blurring the boundary between ‘I’ and ‘it’ seems like the misguided goal of VR technology. But then again, immersion, which I have argued elsewhere is certainly not a spiritual evil, does just that – blurs the distinctions. How could you build a system that allows for the kind of immersive experience that something like meditation does? And if part of analytic knowing is it’s linear nature, is there a way of designing for more nebulous, non-linear interaction with a computer? Do we always, for example, need to be oriented around our selves, our avatars and profiles, when we engage with the Internet? Could we be and experience multiple perspectives simultaneously? Is there a way of attaining what Ohashi calls ‘alien self’?:

Ryosoke Ohashi, a scholar of Japan’s leading twentieth-century Zen philosopher, Kitaro Nishida, used the word ‘alien self’ to describe what arises when the localized sense of self fades: ‘Something which is quite alien to me enables my existence.’ Eastern traditions often label this ‘nothingness’: ‘This nothingness enables my existence and also my relation with all.’ But ‘in traditional Christian terminology, this absolute alienness could be said to be God. God is in me – although Nishida doesn’t directly say ‘God.’ But something that is quite alien to me is in my own self’ (101).

More obviously than immediately suggesting design interventions and concepts, this section very clearly advocates a particular methodology that I should probably try to use in my PhD. My supervisor had been describing a non-linear design process to me, that sounds much like this: about doing the linear bit that’s necessary for the literature review, but simultaneously allowing the intuition, completely uninhibited, to make leaps. The thing that I really like about this section is that I now have a spiritual justification for using this design methodology. This ‘presencing’ in my PhD is, effectively, spiritual practice applied to design thinking.

And lastly, I think one of the points I should argue in my PhD is that this spiritual process – which the design community would to some extent embrace (though perhaps not always in Buddhist terms) – would be tremendously helpful for coming up with radical innovations in computing, which is more biased toward and traditionally linear. Infusing computing thinking with spiritual ‘knowing’, and borrowing methodologically from design, I will argue, might just be the key to really changing the world.