The Healing Potential of Metadesign

Dr. Otto van Nieuwenhuijze

I will show that the effectiveness of design depends on how well it interfaces, or is embedded within, its context.
This is a complex and elusive idea. How might we formalise, or model it in a way that enables us to grasp it better?
One excellent example is your body because it represents a good working example of interface and context.
As individual human beings we experience this process of integration at first hand but it is sometimes elusive.
One reason for this is that classical Western science tended to depict the body as an inert mechanical object.
Today, I will not apply the received anatomical model of the body as 'walking cadaver'. It is a living system.
Using Cartesian, dualistic language we might say that the body interfaces between information and matter.
Some might prefer to say that wholeness is an integration of Body, Mind, Soul and Spirit. We can use either.

I was trained an engineer before I became a doctor so I am familiar with both ways to describe it.
Actually, there is not a great deal of difference between the way doctors and engineers see it.
Traditionally speaking, both are trained, primarily, to intervene at the physical, material level.
Speaking personally, this is the reason why I prefer to identify myself, and to practise as, a healer.
Doctors are trained to intervene after illness emerges, and - in a sense - to mend what has broken.
This seems a rather ineffective approach, compared with caring for the body so that it remains whole.
The idea of wholeness is important to the notion of metadesign. It is related to the word for 'healing'.
But 'healing' is a strange word to apply to designing. Surely, designers do not heal, they improve or create?
It may be self-evident, or truistic, to say that, in design, the designer's involvement plays a crucial role.
But when we speak of someone's involvement in the task (within its context) we describe their integration.

As I have implied, both design, and involvement entails integrating oneself within both the task, and its context.
It is not really possible to do this unless there is also an adequate degree of integration (wholeness) within oneself.
The relationship between the designer's internal integration and her integration with the external world is vital.
The complexity of involvement within the design task (in context) shows how unhelpful the dualistic model is.
Although though we may not we notice it, involvement is something that is always experienced in one's body.
But here, it is important to emphasize that I am not referring to a dead body, but to a living body.
In a living body, directionality is important. What happens from 'outside-in' is not what happens 'inside-out'.
This is a transactional process that must regulate itself in order to maintain balance across the system.
Unless the internal state is properly attuned to the outside state there will be lack of integrity.
Lack of integrity at this level is to say that there is illness. In extreme cases this will result in death.
This is true for every living system, whether it is a single-celled bacteria, or a large corporation.

To recap: the matching of the organism's internal identity to its external identity is essential to its survival.
The survival of all living organisms depends on how well they interface with, or are embedded within their context.
Again, it is important to develop a language that will inform the different levels on which metadesign might work.
Classical Western medicine saw the heart merely as a pump that circulates blood and redistributes it over the body.
Today we might think of it at the process level. Just like the brain, it re-distributes information appropriately.
Indeed, all organs of the body are multi-functional agents that exist as both information and matter, etc.
This is why it makes sense to identify different levels or orders of being, and functionality. For example:

In our body these levels are manifest in physical, chemical, electromagnetic form and in the form of informatics.
How can we describe them? Using scientific terms, for example, we may need to draw upon the following:

Apart from the objective descriptive aspect they also have a subjective experiential content.
This is known as our conscious, subconscious, unconscious and our-of-consciousness involvement.
In short, living systems maintain themselves only by synergizing their experience/s within a whole context.

One's body maintains itself by regulating the discourse among its many (similar and different) body cells.
This process is orchestrated by four distinct regulatory systems that manage the process of integration:

Indeed, the heart gives the blood an electromagnetic pulse and redistributes it around the body.
The abdomen consists of a mass of distributed 'brain' cells which provide a sampling function.
This is very similar to the way tongue acts as an integrator.
Another example is the immune system.
None of these systems operate on basis of energy, but of synergy.

The relationship between the cells is decisive for the functioning of the body as a whole.
The unfoldment of the body from the zygote, and the development of our body as part of all l ife forms, are interrelated.
From the perspective of the species, our body contains aspects of the mineral, plant, animal and human forms.
From the perspective of development, our body operates as cells, organs, body and humanity (as a whole).
Design - if it is to be healthy - likewise needs to be based in the same principles, in the same manner.
The essence is that our body shows our interfacing at work: how each participant is an active part of the whole.
The way information and matter are integrated in an individual's being is self-similar to the way s/he relates to the world.
The body may therefore manifest all relevant aspects of creation. It is a useful template for metadesign.
Designers also work with information and matter.
On the one hand they interact with mind, in the social context. On the other hand they interact with materials, borrowed from Earth.
Ideally, metadesign integrates both aspects. It therefore operates by the principles of healing
For this it helps to use the laws of creation as seen, and experienced, in our body.

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