A large proportion of disputes between people are caused by misunderstandings and lack of knowledge. People communicate in many different ways and use very different languages. Often the same words are given very different meanings. For example, a friend of mine, when I talked about the importance of bureaucracy, said that he thought of bureaucracy as ”just a lot of useless paperwork in the office”.
But this is not what bureaucracy means. Wikipedia defines bureaucracy like this: ”Bureaucracy (French bureau + Greek kratein) refers to the organizations, measures, protocols, and regulations by which an activity is ordered and carried out. It is most typically found in government and large organizations.” It is important for a society to have a good system of governance, otherwise it will drift into anarchy, chaos and injustice.
Logistics is defined like this: ”the management of resources and their movement”. Information is also a resource. A friend of mine is a postman, a logistics professional. With him we talked about the importance of generalism, interdisciplinarity and human consensus. He suggested that we should focus on ”people-to-people logistics”, communicating clearly and in such a way that messages get through without misunderstanding. The key here is to take time for discussion, understanding the ambiguity of concepts, empathy and understanding others, systems thinking, interdisciplinarity and general knowledge. It is important to train people of all ages to communicate and think better. Today we talk about lifelong learning. We can always evolve and learn the latest knowledge. On the other hand, it is also important to understand the wisdom of previous generations. We can also learn new ways of thinking from other cultures. The most resilient societies are multicultural.
Indigenous peoples have adapted to their environment over millennia and their wisdom is highlighted, especially in environmental matters. To understand each other, we need to understand each other’s worldviews and ontologies, or ways of being. If we do not understand the conventions, context and worldview of, say, a Jewish or Hindu faith, it can be more difficult to understand the people of those faiths. It is therefore very good that we nowadays teach a lot about different cultures and religions in schools. A convention is a familiar way of presenting things, for example the conventions of a poem and a news story are completely different. This blog’s convention is a blog post, which is different from a scientific research article. When we understand the convention, we can better get inside the text or the speech. So understanding language and communication, such as media literacy and understanding meanings, is key, and education and awareness are key.
One of the hottest topics in science today is interdisciplinarity. Solving societal and environmental problems requires cooperation between many disciplines and also requires individual scientists to have multidisciplinary skills. For example, an environmental scientist needs to understand economics and psychology, because many problems have economic and psychological roots. Complex world problems are not solved by simple decisions and measures. According to Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, solving complex problems requires equally complex measures and management.
Climate change and other wicked problems are not Gordian knots. Solving wicked problems requires a systems approach that understands the complex interactions between parts of a system. Similarly, good leadership and management always require a systems approach and an understanding of complexity and uncertainty. Society is a very complex system.
Systems thinking is key to the logistics of human interaction. Generalists who know a little bit about everything are skilled at understanding others and bringing others to that understanding. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas argued that in politics, or the management of common affairs, instead of bickering, decision-makers should be informed as much as possible and debate and discuss as long as possible, so that consensus is readily reached. He argued that good information and long debate would result in the best viewpoint emerging and winning.
In 2016, astonishing results were published about the network within a forest, where trees are connected to each other through fungi and the fungal webs that attach to their roots. Fungi often live in symbiosis with trees and donate water to the trees, while trees provide the fungi with glucose, a sugar they produce through photosynthesis in their leaves. However, an underground network of roots and fungi connects the whole forest, which works in symbiosis. Roots and trunks move not only sugar and water from one tree to another, but also information. Trees, for example, protect
For example, trees warn each other of the dangers of destructive attacks. This is also done by trees releasing pheromones into the air with their leaves. Through a network of roots and fungal webs, trees also help weak and sick tree individuals by providing them with sugar. This benefits the whole forest. If only humans could learn the same level of solidarity that trees have. The forest is a living holistic entity and a highly intelligent ecosystem where everything affects everything. In the Lord of the Rings books, the forest’s leading trees, the Ents, spoke slowly and at length in their meetings, just as Habermas suggests. Humans could imitate the forest when organising society to create a sustainable future.
Daniel Elkama
BBC Trees and fungi and their networks
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p06c93k9/how-trees-secretly-talk-to-each-other
Jürgen Habermas
Ecoblogi - A Blog by Daniel Elkama 
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