Why You Must Do the Thing, Follow the Mazeway
This is true of Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, science and education, and your social club
With Miroslaw Manicki
There was a young Muslim man. To him, at that time, Islam was a social and cultural factor in his mind; he was not a believer or an acolyte. His father earnestly requested that he accompany him on a trip to Mecca to carry out the traditional Hajj. The son was not in any way enthusiastic about the prospect, but did go and did participate, simply to please his father.
The activities of the Hajj are varied and perhaps unexpected by non-Muslims. As per Wikipedia, here are the activities that make up this tradition, expected at some point in the lives of all practicing Muslims.
During Hajj, pilgrims join processions of millions of people, who simultaneously converge on Mecca for the week of the Hajj, and perform a series of rituals: each person walks counter-clockwise seven times around the Kaaba (a cube-shaped building and the direction of prayer for Muslims), trots (walks briskly) back and forth between the hills of Safa and Marwah seven times, then drinks from the Zamzam Well, goes to the plains of Mount Arafat to stand in vigil, spends a night in the plain of Muzdalifa, and performs symbolic stoning of the devil by throwing stones at three pillars. After the sacrifice of an animal (can be accomplished by using a voucher), the Pilgrims then are required to either shave or trim their heads (male) or trim the ends of their hair (female). A celebration of the three-day global festival of Eid al-Adha proceeds thereafter. Wikipedia, November 26, 2021.
As can be seen, the Hajj is a big deal. It is also multifaceted and exhaustive, even by the standards of young people. All Muslims are expected to participate at some point in their lives. There were 2,489,406 participants in 2019, but there has been a 10,000 limit in 2020 due to COVID-19 and a 60,000 limit in 2021 due to COVID-19.
The young man in question found himself in the middle of this all with his father. He walked. He trotted. He drank. He stood in vigil. He spent the night. He threw stones. He witnessed the sacrifice. He shaved (or trimmed). He participated in the festival.
Curiously, to him, he experienced a significant transformation. He was converted; he believed; his heart was softened, and he joined the community of believers in their mutual journey of submission, in peace and knowledge.
Kenneth had an experience with his father that this brings to mind. Named Willis, he lived to the age of ninety, passing away in 1994, three months after his wife of sixty-three years.
The experience in question was not religious, but practical. He had wanted Kenneth to be an engineer. First committed to music, later to business and finance, then to international relations, he had progressed through a variety of activities. Just before his father’s passing, he talked about what he had learned about processes, not only the history of quality control and statistical control of processes from Walter Shewhart to W. Edwards Deming, but the phenomenon lean production as developed by Japanese automobile manufacturers and documented by James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos (The machine that changed the world, 1990/1991). The latter had grown out of application of the former. Kenneth also recounted what he had learned from a software model he had learned about and was using, that had been developed in local research.
This led to engineering wisdom from his father, an unexpected validation:
“Now you are on to something.”
Willis A. Tingey to Kenneth in the early 1990s regarding the study of processes.
The elder Tingey clarified that his understanding of process penetrated deeper than engineering, in his experience from early research efforts. In 1927, in his senior year of engineering training at Utah State Agricultural College, he had been given a research assignment by his major professor. The job was to measure water runoff through various soils subject to differing environmental conditions. The key was to understand how water behaved as it passed through clay or sand or silt or loam, etc.
In 1927, there was no lack of experience, particularly in the American West, regarding soil and water. Water was the most important factor allowing for settlements of people under harsh conditions. In contemporary times, although there are more evident means of moving water around, the fact remains: Water is necessary for life in all of its manifestations.
After setting up the environment for the study, the elder Tingey studied the processes in detail, repetitively and under controlled conditions. He was able to use the school’s facilities and resourced to do so. At the appropriate time, he presented his method and his findings.
Problematically, his findings did not correspond with or support received wisdom in the matter. There was some grumbling. Nonetheless, with a degree and prospects, he went out into the world as a staff engineer in the U.S. Geological Service, where he made maps, mostly up and down the Mississippi River and along the border between Mexico and Texas.
Interestingly, twenty years later, upon his return to the university as an engineering professor, Mr. Tingey learned that the data and his conclusions had been replicated, his findings had been corroborated and published, and science and policy in the matter had changed. Unknowingly, he had participated in the march forth of science and practice in this important area.
The point is that scientists and practitioners thought they knew of the phenomenon, but they were likely thinking of runoff in a static way. By studying the question in active ways — learning of the processes in question, he was able to learn and to pass on something new, that was more valid and useful. Thus, the student Willis advanced the science by extending the quest into the dimensionality of process.
Processes are at the base of everything. For one thing, they are the means by which one can come to understand context, which itself is at the base of everything. There is insufficient attention to this. It is learned and then forgotten. One who firmly established this fundamental factor was the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead. He established a tradition of process-based understanding that extended to science as well as religion (Process and reality, 1978, Griffin ed.). He referred to the phrase “all things flow” and “the flux of things” to describe this. He affirmed this mode of reality, making use of a common Christian hymn phrase, confirming both participation and the rolling realities of change:
Abide with me, fast falls the eventide. Henry F. Lyte, 1793–1847
James Grier Miller was a student of Whitehead’s, he was a scientist and physician. His life’s work was to extend the concepts of process to the understanding of all living things, at all levels of existence.
Dr. Miller laid out the levels of known living systems as seen to the left, progressing from very small cells to the vast conglomerations and collections of communities of not only humans, but all living beings. He does see human forms of organization as being central to his analysis. In such study, there is no distinction between physical science and social science. Indeed, one of its major theses is that such a division is not warranted.
The point of the study is to understand that the processes that support life at the many levels are similar. A few serve to define the organisms and organizations, forming borders and barriers. There are processes that define and transform matter and energy in a dance between the two. There are processes that import, transform, and evaluate information, prior to acting on it and exporting results to other systems and natural phenomena. Fundamental to it all are acting, doing, participating, integrating.
By doing the thing, you become a part of the cosmology of all things. This includes the communities of living things as well as the active play of forces, in both cases including the interplays of the very large and very small.
There is a pernicious theory that one can actively resist these and that somehow it will all turn out in the end. This is not true; this is a mean whisper from the evil ones, who wish no one good ends though they may pretend to care. Others are fooled by this and pass the lie along. Insanity of this kind is our biggest barrier, even carefully and thinly sliced though it may be. For all of this to work, there must be the resonance of truth and genuineness.
Guidance in this comes with no irony within the Preface to the King James Bible, that 17th century breakthrough effort of English origin that leveraged the knowledge of hundreds and the commitment and sacrifice of thousands.
In the Preface to the King James Bible we thus read:
…if, on the one side, we shall be traduced by Popish Persons at home or abroad, who therefore will malign us, because we are poor instruments to make God’s holy Truth to be yet more and more known unto the people, whom they desire still to keep in ignorance and darkness; or if, on the other side, we shall be maligned by selfconceited Brethren, who run their own ways, and give liking unto nothing, but what is framed by themselves, and hammered on their anvil; we may rest secure, supported within by the truth and innocency of a good conscience, having walked in the ways of simplicity and integrity, as before the Lord…
The point was to put the record into the reach of farmboys among others if they would read the book and work to apply its teachings. They can act on what they learn. As the Preface indicates, as to participation in the Universe, no intermediaries are required to gain in knowledge and substance of this kind. Process of one kind leads to processes of another, as in the Bible, there are many to be learned and considered.
Coming to such knowledge, fundamental to the message of the Bible in its Old and New Testaments, has come with some excess baggage. One of these is the prime fiction that you can act in one way and take on the patina of another. This is to say that works do not really matter.
There was a dust-up between Martin Luther and Ulrich Zweig in the early 16th century, adjudicated by John Calvin (John Calvin: An introduction to his theological thought, 2009, M. Vial/V. Lowe tran.). This involved interpretation of teachings by the Apostle Paul with respect to grace and works. Ironically, Luther toyed with the concept of faith being sufficient without works while reading a treatise by Calvin.
Calvin responded by indicating that he meant to better emphasize sanctification as being necessary, which comes in part as the result of detailed, intimate participation in righteous acts and rites. Ulrich Zweig enthusiastically backed Calvin in this, which solidified Luther and his followers in the extreme opposite view, largely due to their enmity for Zweig, with whom they were loath to agree. Thus was born the contemporary fallacy that what you do doesn’t matter apart from protestations of belief, which are needed. This ties a Gordian knot itself, because such a protestation of belief is itself an act.
Finally, we make a point of what this is all about. It can be seen in the writings of Anthony Wallace, an anthropologist who studied the old cultures of North America, but who describes culture and civilization in an active sense (Revitalizations & mazeways, vols i and ii, 2003, R. Grumet ed.). He says that such cultures serve to educate and acculturate its people by means of active traditions. He refers to these as “mazeways” that are embedded in the acts and formalities of people that serve to instruct and maintain as it were over time, extending beyond the personal contact, oral traditions, and other means of communicating over time. His description of this lies firmly in the camp of Whitehead and Miller:
A human society is here regarded as a definite kind of organism, and its culture is conceived as those patterns of learned behavior which certain “parts” of the social organism or system (individual persons and groups of persons) characteristically display. A corollary of the organismic analogy is the principle of homeostasis; that a society will work, by means of coordinated actions (including cultural actions) by all or some of its parts, to preserve its own integrity by maintaining a minimally fluctuating, life-supporting matrix for its individual members, and will, under stress, take emergency measures to preserve the constancy of this matrix…
… it is … functionally necessary for every person in society to maintain a mental image of the society and its culture, as well as of his own body and its behavioral regularities, in order to act in ways which reduce stress at all levels of the system. The person does, in fact, maintain such an image. This mental image I have called “the mazeway,” since as a model of the cell-body-personality-nature-culture-society system or field, organized by the individual’s own experience, it includes perceptions of both the maze of physical objects of the environment (internal and external, human and nonhuman) and also of the ways in which this maze can be manipulated by the self and others in order to minimize stress. The mazeway is nature, society, culture, personality, and body image, as seen by one person. (Wallace, Ibid., 11–12).
Whew!
In summary, then, how is it that we live well, in best form, and in harmony?
We must do the thing. In this we can find peace as well as the sanctification thus described. This is true in religion, as has been noted. There, there are performances and ordinances to be carried out, all in their times and places. They are to be conducted by people that have prepared themselves appropriately, which is to say according to established processes. This is true in society in its many manifestations — school, commerce, sport, entertainment, the work of the world. There are ways of doing things. There are ways of getting along. Certainly, in many cases, those patterns of behavior have been developed over the long span of time in the interweaving of nature, nurture, belief, and knowledge. These are the mazeways.
This involves more than the attainment of desired outcomes. Quality does indeed depend on this. Our point currently is that it involves the conversion, satisfaction, development, and character of the doer. Hearts are thus softened and character is developed; people thus grow in understanding and compassion.
What is the thing to be done? It may not always be obvious, but often it is. It is ultimately grounded in the commitment to conform at certain times, under certain conditions. Coming to understand those times and circumstances is a critical pretext; it may take the best efforts of governments, organizations, and societies to arrive at these. Science needs to be served up on a platter, when and where it applies. This is where technology could be of great use. The same is true of social acts, based on particular commitments and associations. If people are left to guess as to what is to be done, the enterprise fails in its entirety. This is what society and culture is all about, as well as peaceful coexistence and civilization. This is what professionalism is all about, whether in art or craft or trade or profession.
Let’s commit to process. Let’s commit to do that thing that needs to be done in the way it should be done. We may need to work to learn of these. Let’s do that too. We need systems and programs to assist people in this way. This provides a means by which we can defeat the tyranny of ignorance and the lure of corruption and malfeasance. We need to enjoy those kinds of outcomes, dependable and effective. We need to be that kind of people, dependable, happy, and effective.
This was demonstrated in the documentary “Paper & Glue” (2021) by artist JR. In conjunction with Marc Azoulay and Sara Bernstein, he documented the creation of a massive group portrait of inmates in a supermax prison in the United States. The resulting image could only properly be seen from the sky, which he demonstrated to the participants via drone photography and computer imagery. The result was a level of collaboration and cooperation by the inmates, their guards, and others that was unprecedented.
Broadcast nationally by MSNBC cable network, the show included the following insight by one of the inmates:
I don’t want to take it [the picture or part of it] off the ground. I want to leave it there. I want it to stay. When I am tearing it [as it was being removed afterward] it felt good. It felt like something freeing, right?
The process is what mattered. I think that is what art is, is that process. It wasn’t just we took a picture, or we drew a picture, or we sang a song, or that the whole process was in doing something. It was kind of beautiful and it affected me. So that is art, that is what I learned from you artists. Supermax prisoner in Paper & Glue documentary on MSNBC, December 10, 2021
This was followed by commentary by JR himself, who took the risks and made the effort to make the project possible:
“Process is what it is all about.” It took me years to realize that, and he just realized it in a heartbeat. It stayed with me because that reassured me I was keeping the right part of that whole journey. JR in Paper & Glue documentary on MSNBC, December 10, 2021
Once you know what to look for, you can see these truths about the importance of process manifest everywhere.