1: Introduction to Pluralism

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Introduction to Pluralism 

            More information is being produced, shared and stored than ever before. Information is rising up, lifting out of direct experience, rising from every area of human activity, every person, every place. The means of producing creative expression are rapidly becoming accessible to ever more of the global population. We are now sharing information locally and spreading it translocally through a multitude of means. The internet has created a globally accessible container, allowing for informational representations to extend beyond former parameters of space and time, beyond the realm of direct experience to interact and relate in their own transcendent ecosystem. This is old news.

            Every object, every observed phenomenon, now carries along with it its historic inheritance of every way that humans have sought to understand it, all the ways we have interacted with it. As such, it horizontalizes all branches of study, all creative interactions, all personal experience- pooling the entire legacy of all cultural objects, information and its representation into a wide and vast ocean of all that is.

            Language, sensory input, information- these are dimension-exploring devices. They construct and compose our very idea of what the world is, how it works, what is possible. At this historical moment we stand confronted with the sheer volume of this information, its diversity and complexity. It encompasses the globe. 

            Some are trying to manage the enormity of this planetary coalescence by working towards a totalizing system of order- communism, a global government, international law. Some are turning toward the local, focusing on community resilience, working in collective farms, trying to live in self-sustaining communes. Some are addressing mid-range structures of power, lobbying governments to improve and continue social programs, give teeth to human rights law, organizing against transnational corporations and their many ploys to desecrate the environment, poison our food, profit from war, avoid all accountability and generally continue functioning within the internal logic of a shamefully myopic profit-driven industrial growth model.

            We can stand from a vantage point that allows for us to see how all  of these types of human activity and more are happening at once. All of these responses to our idea of what the world is, what is possible and how we can participate; they are all occurring simultaneously. And when we expand our scope, stretching our capacity to include all that is, our lens necessarily becomes Pluralist. Precisely because it is inclusive of all observable activity. Instead of actively attempting to impose one system or ideology onto what we observe, we can be receptive. Receptive enough to see the multiplicity of systems that come from people believing and working to bring to bear their interpretations of diverse ideologies which interact- weaving and relating, forming the texture, the topography of what is. Pluralism is a container for this process, enabling us to see how this great multiplicity can co-exist, and how it does so in a way that is continuously evolving through time. Pluralism is a dynamic framework capable of holding and allowing for the pace of change while encouraging the possibility for novel developments. 

2: Pluralism in Practice

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Pluralism in Practice

Scholars the world over are in the process of applying Pluralist thinking to different areas of the social world. In terms of government, Peter Somerville put forward the idea that government no longer has a monopoly on power. Instead, we can now see how social circumstances are created at the intersection of governments, markets, media, organizations, and individuals. Practically speaking, change is not brought about exclusively by government, although the goal might be nested within the realm of government. The change occurs through a complex, multifaceted process, which includes government, just as it also almost always includes markets, media, organizations and individuals.

            A lot of what activists are currently working for  does not lie within the  realm of government’s power, and certainly is not solely attainable through government. Individuals and organizations find themselves striving to bring about general shifts in consciousness or working on areas as complicated and nebulous as the global financial system. In many areas, government may not be the most effective way to bring about the desired change. OR, in practice, it may be more strategic to coordinate with governments from a position within markets, media, organizations and as an individual. If we acknowledge that circumstances and social systems are created at the intersection of governments, companies, media, organizations and individuals, then we can understand how large scale social change happens through people working in all of these areas, through all these different channels, at once.

            In terms of global economies, previous economic social theorists have said that we are living in a Global Capitalist System. Though some nation-states may have slightly different models, they still participate and engage in Capitalist structures for the goods and services that sustain them. How few rogue states there are is a testament to how difficult it is to go against the global norm. Often, when nation-states do, they are commonly jocking for a more advantageous position within the system, not genuinely transcending it. Even nation-states who begin with revolutionary ideals end up playing this way out of perceived necessity. This view sees that we are all encased in this Global Capitalist System and, at this point, there is no way out.

            J.K. Gibson-Graham, in their book on Queering the Economy, forwarded the idea that what is actually going on is a kind of Heterogeneous Capitalism. If one pulls back the hard case label of Capitalism, one  can see there is actually a multiplicity of economic exchanges and systems going on. There are socialist institutions, communes, black markets, care economies, gift economies. There are even groups that do use capitalist structures as a way to transmit life-sustaining values, create fair chains of production or bring people together in community. Gibson-Graham evoke what they call  ‘a theory of possibilities’, a way of seeing what resources one does have and what one is able to do. In this way, starting from present circumstances, we can find fertile areas of possibility to begin taking action. They feel that one of the most productive kinds of action we can take is to create spaces for people to come together. Whether physical or virtual, it is through a space for ‘being in common’ that we gain the potential to generate and support novel innovation. It is through spaces of being in common that alternative economic exchange systems can inoculate and grow inside the organismic whole. This is a dynamic vision of change, a process starting from present circumstances, shifting the infrastructure of survival from within the container of a heterogeneous capitalism.

            In terms of the very process of how things come into being, Michelle Callon and Bruno LaTour originally crafted Actor Network Theory in order to tell the history of data. They felt that all cultural objects, like skyscrapers and scientific facts, are the result of innumerable living and non-living actants involved in micro-processes of relationship and interaction. There is a story that describes and explains why things come to exist in the way that they do. LaTour and Callon wanted to break up linear telling of history, traditionally told from limited points of view as cause and effect- where one event occurs drawing an arrow to the next event and so on. They showed how an arrow pointing in one direction is also pointing in the direction it came from. In Actor Network Theory all arrows are pointing from all elements to all elements at all times. An awareness similar to what Buddhist scholars call pratītyasamutpāda, meaning inter-dependant co-arising.

            Detailing the Actor Network in an exercise in complexity, a thought experiment to consider and include all of the living and non-living entities that enable, support and influence the way that something comes to be in the social world. To try to understand a single social formation, this perspective includes things like opposing groups, the building a club uses for their meet ups and the media used in promotions as all part of the extended network because they have a role in influencing the behavior of that group. This view allows us to understand that a single social formation exists within an ecology of people, nature and technology, which all contribute locally and non-locally to the expression of each. Actor Network Theory is an exercise in fully considering all the factors that impact the reason why a particular social formation comes into being as well as seeing the full landscape of which it is a part.

            In all of these cases, Pluralist thought is a cognitive tool, an ontological step revealing the interconnected nature of existence. This Pluralist view does not erase difference. It is not intended to gloss over the structural dynamics of power or underestimate the fear and anger that rise up in response to the forces we face. The darkness is great, the pain very real, the stakes high. We are being called to action. The task before us is nothing less then transforming the way that we live with each other and the planet. We are being called to bring about true social justice, an internal and external peace unheard of in recorded human history. We are being called to bring about an environmental relationship drastically different then that which now enables our survival. The information indicates that time is running out. This is our narrowing window of opportunity to see the intricate and inextricable interexistance between the social and the environmental worlds, and to work for that totality, to work for a Global Justice.

3: The Geometry of Pluralism

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The Geometry of Pluralism

Romanesco, Broccoli 

         In all of these cases, Pluralist thought is a cognitive tool, an ontological step revealing the interconnected nature of existence. This Pluralist view does not erase difference. It is not intended to gloss over the structural dynamics of power or underestimate the fear and anger that rise up in response to the forces we face. The darkness is great, the pain very real, the stakes high. We are being called to action. The task before us is nothing less then transforming the way that we live with each other and the planet. We are being called to bring about true social justice, an internal and external peace unheard of in recorded human history. We are being called to bring about an environmental relationship drastically different then that which now enables our survival. The information indicates that time is running out. This is our narrowing window of opportunity to see the intricate and inextricable interexistance between the social and the environmental worlds, and to work for that totality, to work for a Global Justice.

            Because this is our current challenge, what we need is a clear model of how social change actually happens. So that we can be strategic with our efforts. So we can contextualize and co-ordinate our good work. So we can become lucid in this movement and step into empowered choice- choosing our tools, allies and campaigns from a place of conscious passion. So we can identify our true opposition and find greater acceptance in our co-existence with others. So that maybe we can come to love each other more, because maybe that is the only real chance we have at pulling this one out.

            Stepping into pluralist thought, expanding the peripheral vision to include ever more, seeing past closed categories to the larger, underlying territory. Gazing out at this vast ocean of what is- there is so much. The area is wide and deep, the raw expansiveness of it intuitively calls for a way to structure  the space. Turning towards geometry, the science and architecture of space, our mathematical language for navigating its expanses. Seeking an appropriate form, a descriptive principle. Pulling apart the scales, mapping out the emerging patterns. They come, building like wave out of wave. The contours of this pattern are far too complex to be described by traditional Euclidian geometry. And, remarkably, the self-propagating, self-generating, self-organizing scales of what is seem to follow the principles of a fractal.

            Fractals are self-similar patterns where smaller and larger iterations form the same pattern on different scales. Fractals are everywhere in nature: lungs, river networks, tides. A classic example is how a tree follows a primary branching pattern. Its trunk reaches out to its larger branches, those branches then reach out into smaller branches in a form that follows the original pattern. Smaller branches then extend into leaves, whose spine is like a tree trunk reaching out with larger ribs that then branch out into smaller phytocellular branches and so on. These patterns repeating on different scales are everywhere in nature. The smaller pattern not only follows the form of the larger, but also experiences itself as an autonomous entity. An example of this is coral. Coral is made from polips. Those polips are part of the larger coral organism, functioning as one. Yet, simultaneously scientists have recently become aware that each individual polyp is having it own polyp experience. You can also think about how a brain cell looks like the projected image of the universe, how planets orbit the sun similar to how protons and neurons orbit an electron, or the way the whole planet behaves like a single living organism. The example of the tree branching pattern is a simple spatial fractal. An example of a time-space fractal would be something more like the carbon cycle- where beings exchange carbon for oxygen at varying levels of coordination simultaneously. A single animal exhales the carbon a tree inhales while the algae in the ocean inhale the carbon off-gassing from industrial production while the hooves of grazing animals turn up the oxygen in the soil and deposits carbon there all occuring on different scales in innumerable interactions all at the same time.

            Applying this principle, I have developed a model of the machinations of social change and a vision of Global Justice that I call Fractal Pluralism. Fractal Pluralism brings a fractal understanding to a pluralist conception of social change. Fractal Pluralism is a model,  a way of spatially visualizing the intricate interconnection of the full spectrum of activities being undertaken by people to bring about a life sustaining culture on this planet. It is a form of scalar play, collapsing the dichotomy between local and global to show the complex layering and the multi-scalarity of human organizing. As a model in action, it is geared towards finding tactical alliances on all scales. This does not mean that everyone is on the team. The opposition is real and a distraction;destruction and disengagement are ever present. This model is a tool for visionary activists to conceptualize their position in the pluralist process towards Global Justice. It is a re-imagining of networks, intended to move us towards the goal of discerning which relationships are useful to articulate, including markets, governments, non-governmental organizations, spiritual communities and whomever else one wants to include, honor and celebrate as doing the work to bring about Global Justice.

4: Introducing Fractal Pluralism, Space and Scale

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Introducing Fractal Pluralism: Space and Scale

    Applying these principles, I have developed a model of the machinations of social change and a vision of Global Justice that I call Fractal Pluralism. Fractal Pluralism brings a fractal understanding to a pluralist conception of social change. Fractal Pluralism is a model,  a way of spatially visualizing the intricate interconnection of the full spectrum of activities being undertaken by people to bring about a life sustaining culture on this planet. It is a form of scalar play, collapsing the dichotomy between local and global to show the complex layering and the multi-scalarity of human organizing. As a model in action, it is geared towards finding tactical alliances on all scales. This does not mean that everyone is on the team. The opposition is real and distraction, destruction and disengagement are ever present. This model is a tool for visionary activists to conceptualize their position in the pluralist process towards Global Justice. It is a re-imagining of networks, intended to move us towards the goal of discerning which relationships are useful for us to articulate, including markets, governments, non-governmental organizations, spiritual communities and whomever else one wants to include, honor and celebrate as doing the work to bring about Global Justice.

            First, one must choose a point of focus. This could be an individual, a social formation, an object, anything one can identify. Focusing on a particular point, it becomes the intersection of the X and Y-axis. The Y-axis is scale. Everything that the focal point participates in that is larger than itself, a more complex organization which includes itself, extends up the Y-axis. Everything smaller in scale than the point of focus, the levels of organization which comprise it, descend down the Y-axis, below the X-axis. The X-axis shows time moving horizontally. Everything to the left of the Y-axis marking all that has come before. Everything to the right of the Y-axis marking being that which shall emerge as the future. This model is crafted so that we can pin-point an exact time-scale coordinate and map out the ways in which it is participating in generating its part of this fractal pattern as it self-propagates iterations throughout the whole.

Basic Fractal Pluralism Cross Formation:

            Here, we begin this model by describing the vertical Y-axis of space, taking just a snap-shot of what is going on at a given point in time. If we begin with an individual, everything to the left of the Y-axis represents their nature, their nurture, their history of encounters with information, their socio-economic-geographic-historic specificity- all that particularity, what Donna Haraway calls the specificity of specificity. Through all these influencing forces, they will limit their focus; they will choose interests; they will translate those interests into action. Some of this action will be collective, bringing it to a larger scale of the social world. Individuals will cluster, creating social formations- social formations being a word intentionally open enough to encompass the diversity of things that come from people uniting around interests in some sort of activity. Social formations will include the people they consider to be their network, those who they are consciously coordinating their activity with. Scaled up and seen through a broader perspective, they also have their Actor Network. Although they may be diverse in their goals, multiple in the topics they address and that emerge, when pressed, most individuals within social formations can identify a particular issue they most want to impact. This is the level of the Issue Plateau, where the efforts of the particular social formation are co-existing with those of diverse groups locally, regionally and world-wide who are also working to bring about change, to bring about something new, in the topography of that interest area.

            Being Pluralistic in our view of the broad landscape populated by diverse social formations at the level of the interest plateau, we can see how these are often the groups that are in rabid disagreement with each other over the kind of change they want to see. This is also where the opposition exists, holding strong, often controlling the infrastructures of the terrain- exerting with tenacity the destructive, consuming violence of the blind industrial-growth status quo. And this is where the Pluralist perspective enables us to be strategic, redirecting our efforts towards the systems we are working to transform. Instead of wasting our passion by directing our energy towards a potential ally about a response that makes sense to them and that they have come to given their specificity, we can put our energy towards doing our own thing and exerting energy only towards those forces that are truly a threat to global justice.

The Scales of Fractal Pluralism:

            If we can achieve this way of seeing, this strategic, experiential being-ness of compassionate understanding and acceptance, then at the next scale up, at the planetary level, we can feel ourselves united with diverse individuals, social formations and networks from all over the world- all working, dancing, striving, struggling, playing, trying to bring about Global Justice and a life-sustaining culture on this planet. From there you can play it backwards: From all these efforts and desire to bring about Global Justice, people focus on different issue areas by participating in diverse social formations, which address different aspects of an issue, through governments, markets, media, organizations and individuals. They are all  co-existing in relationships outside the consideration by the groups involved, whose activity influences and shapes each other, who almost create the need for each other. Social formations actively articulate their relationships with whom they consider to be their network. Individual social formations are composed of individual people who choose to participate because it is an active expression of their interests and passions based on what makes sense to them given their specificity, their nature, their nurture, and their history of encounters with information.

5: An Example of Fractal Pluralism

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An Example of Fractal Pluralism

       For example, I interviewed Mitch, who works at Zipcar, in Portland, Oregon. Mitch has his socio-economic/ geographic-historical specificity, his nature, his nurture, his history of encounters with information. Throughout his life he has limited his focus and developed interests. When asked what they were, he answered, ”Environmentalism, sports, and electoral politics.” He expresses these in terms of action. He goes camping with his girlfriend, volunteer coaches basketball, watches a lot of CNN and works at Zipcar. If we  look at Zipcar, there are all the people and organizations  they work with -  the Springwater Trust, the stores that give them priority parking, their customes.  To Mitch, this is his network. If we take it further, we can understand the building they pay rent to, their I-phone app. And not only their customers, but all of the reasons why Zipcar is a viable option leading their customers to choose to be a part of Zipcar, and all the other human and non-human actors that support, enable and influence the existence of this one branch of Zipcar as their Actor Network.

            Clearly, Mitch and everyone  involved in Zipcar are working to bring about transformations in transportation, creating options and alternatives for how we get from point A to point B. So transportation is the interest plateau that Zipcar inhabits. There they are right along with people all over the world addressing the issue of transportation, most of whom have a different idea of what alternatives are best and what the overall system should look like.

            It is the groups that are attempting to bring about change in the same area that are most likely the ones in vicious disagreement with each other. Mario, an inventor I interviewed who works with electric cars, thinks that Zipcar is insufficient to bring about the immense changes necessary to address climate change. Mitch thinks Mario’s project and electric cars are overall unrealistic. However, Fractal Pluralism sees their efforts are  in concert with each other, co-existing almost like different kinds of medicinal plants in an eco-system, which simultaneously create options that make sense and are viable for differently situated subjects, who come from different natures, nurtures and with distinct encounters with information who will gravitate towards the options that best fulfill their emotional and pragmatic needs. Seeing Pluralistically does not mean ignoring these differences or undermining points of view. Instead it encourages us to look for the ways in which what could be perceived as a tension or a disagreement on one scale is in fact working in cooperation on another. In this case, both Mario’s project with electric cars and Zipcar are organically involved in the incremental process to transform what is and what we believe to be possible regarding transportation. 

6: Information as Feedback Loop

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Information as a Feedback Loop

            Information is the feedback loop of the entire system. How we could find out about Zipcar, or electric cars at all and especially how we would come to feel the desire to seek out an alternative mode of transportation, are all entirely dependant on what information our attention is turned towards. Information as a term includes direct experience, and now, because of the techno-social structures enabling the contemporary nature of information, we are receiving informational representations generated by the direct experience of others, which feeds back into our perception, weaving with our experience, creating our map of the world. Information our idea of reality and how it works. 

           There is an intensity to the kinds of shock and overwhelming anxiety that can be caused by the nature of information as it corresponds to real issues going on in the world. Mario says he feels that people like him, who are involved in studying environmental issues, are suffering from a kind of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The information he is being turned towards is literally that distressing, the feeling of isolation and powerlessness that strong. In dealing with the overwhelming volume of information and, often, the intense emotional response to the content, we must limit. As subjects competently navigating the social world we must choose what we care about, what we actively open our perceptual sphere to.

            Receiving information, we transmute our emotional response into action and now, increasingly, we create an informational representation of that action, feeding it back into the system. Making our addition to the collective map of what the world is and what is possible, generating the information that others then respond to. The more that people follow this pattern, producing informational representations of their experience, the more it becomes a social category to be fulfilled. Which is to say, the more we as people feel the desire to follow the form of this pattern, the need to express ourselves in this way. This is a self-perpetuating cycle shaped by techno-social structures. The increase in access to the techno-social means of producing and receiving information seems to be accelerating exponentially. Meaning that, right now, this cycle is self-perpetuating exponentially. And it is all this information, all this representation, all of this voice emerging from everyone, everywhere, sharing what they are doing, that is ushering in the need for a Pluralism paradigm. Information being a Pluralist generator, informing ourselves of ourselves.

Information to Action:

Information -->  Limiting Subject -->  Point of Entry-->

<--Informational Representation  <-- Course of Action

*A self-perpetuating cycle

           

            Here is an example from David, an 7^th grade school teacher at The Sunnyside School in Portland, Oregon. At the Sunnyside School, the month of January is framed as a month of service in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. The theme for David’s class was deforestation. Originally, David felt at a loss for how to tackle such a large topic, but ultimately, he found a point of entry.

My buddy works at this place Green Empowerment, and they work in third world communities helping them practice sustainable farming and be able to keep doing what they’re doing, but not do it in a way where they are destroying the environment at the same time. And so our class spent a month learning about this one biosphere in Nicaragua (through a Green Empowerment project) and finding out ways that we could support it and talk about it.

The students then conceived of their own project ideas for how to raise money to support this organization. All of the student’s projects were uploaded on a website about this one class’s service project about this one biosphere in Nicaragua and was made accessible through a link on the school’s main webpage. Although David voiced his opinion that their contributions were modest, both with respect to helping Green Empowerment and to the larger issue of deforestation, what he felt the project accomplished was transmitting a method for dealing with harsh informational awareness in a constructive way.

I think it teaches them how to figure out more stuff, and then act on this stuff and do things… instead of being overwhelmed with everything that’s going on in the world. I mean, I’m overwhelmed with everything that’s going on in the world, you know? They’re able- even though it’s small scale stuff- they’re able to feel empowered in what they’re doing, like,“(one quotation mark, not 2)Hey, I’m doing something cool, I’m making a difference.’ The four girls who raised a hundred dollars in a bake sale felt pretty cool about themselves. I had some boys who wrote a song and recorded it on the computer. And we made a website… and it’s all out in the world wide web and you can search it on Google and they feel like it’s just- they’ve just really gotten up there.

7: Going Quantum: Adding Time

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F.P. Going Quantum: Adding Time

         A behavior of fractals, discovered while measuring coast lines- another fractal- is that the smaller the unit of measurement, the larger the territory being measured appears to be. When scientists used smaller implements, they were able to record more detail, resulting in a larger final measurement. So tracking the micro-processes leading to why someone is a certain way  in the world is a much more complex and practically infinite map compared to how the micro-processes between individuals lead to the way an organization is. This  is more detailed still  than tracking how the interactions between organizations comprise and create how their network is. The scale of the interest plateau is so large, that the unit of measurement available, tracking processes, once again becomes small, rendering the territory intricately complex. This explains why Collon and LaTour described Actor Network Theory as an exercise. They did not believe the taxonomy could ever be completed, but the kind of thinking the practice encourages approximates a closer understanding to how things come into being and how social change actually occurs.

            In terms of the overall model, the starting unit of scale should be the smallest unit of perception we can identify as acting in the social world. Because we are at a historical moment when the majority of humans experience an individuated consciousness, the smallest starting unit of scale would be an individual. In terms of the starting unit of time for the X-axis, it follows that the smallest action that we can track for an individual acting in the social world is that of a single decision. This is the root pattern of the wave, the form from which it builds. Because information is the feedback loop of the entire system, both the information generated by direct experience and the informational representations generated out of the direct experience of others, enter the individual perceiver as information.

            As information is received, directionally, it dips bellow the X-axis, into the internal world of the individual, interacting with their consciousness, which is conditioned by all that has come before. This produces an emotional reaction, which then rises up, above the X-axis, showing itself in the social world, emerging as a single unit of decision making. Making a decision produces more information, which then dips back bellow the X-axis, interacting with consciousness, producing an emotional response, giving trajectory to the following decision. The overall pattern of this process rising and falling forms a wave. It is the vibratory signature of a person through time. As they move through the social world, this wave fractals through the scales, generating iterations of itself. Each individual within decision making process contributes in creating the composite tone that is the decision of a social formation. Social formations resonate their decision making patterns through their networks and the Actor Network, effecting the decision making harmonics of all the actants within the immediate realm of influence and beyond as their wave becomes part of the pattern song that is being resonated at all the iterations of scale. Establishing an axis intersection point is the process of isolating a particle in this fractal wave form in order to understand the way that it is involved in generating this pattern as it propagates itself.

Decision Wave Form:

            Tracking all the iterations of the information-emotional response- decision-making-information unit coiling through time generating epi-cycles in the amplitudes of scales quickly spirals into all arrows pointing in all directions, to all points at all scales. Thus tightly weaving into the fabric of space and time. An individual life is evocatively reflective of the principles of calligraphy. In the art of calligraphy, what internally wants to be expressed is found in the external form available for that expression. The written character for joy is a form whose lines are expressive of joy. As one writes, they embody the absolute feeling of joy inside themselves. The internal feeling and the external form become collapsed in the dynamic experience of creating the expression itself. So too, a person’s life is their calligraphy- their inner world and their outward expression merging. The experiential strokes drawing the form of their life, their pattern resonating through the calligraphy of the whole- extending through time, patterning through scale.

            By pausing the flow of time to identify the particle within the wave, we can become aware of what Anthony Giddens calls Struturation. We are a product of all that has come before, structured by the ways it has shaped us, we have the ability to act with unique creativity at every moment. Or as Marx said it, ‘the people are made by history and in turn have the opportunity to make history.’

            Pulling apart the temporal aspects of this process, mapping out the linear history of the wave, may not be useful to you. However, this model affords us the perspective to be able to see the importance of individual decision-making and of the individual. This entire model relies on conscious value-driven, ethically motivated decision making to function in a healthy, progressive and constructive way. Which means that much of the healthy functioning of this system lies beneath the phenomenological horizon line of our smallest unit, the individual. It is a complex swarm down there bellow the X-axis, and reflective awareness is only brought to a fraction of the decisions an individual makes. Much evidence shows that to really have an affect in shifting someone’s behaviors, change must happen in their internal world, in their emotional body. It seems like this may be happening more and more because of the feedback loop of information.