Synergetics on the Back Roads

Synergetics, a term initially coined by the systems theorist and environmental activist Buckminster Fuller in the early part of the 20th century, is defined as the empirical study of systems in transformation. Elsewhere, it has been defined as 'the study of how nature works, of the patterns inherent in nature, the geometry of environmental forces that impact on humanity'. Personally, I like to think of it in more simple terms as the collusion of forces upon bodies. This synergy, for example, could be the wind and the rain combined with the pedalling power of the cyclist: two or more energies not just colliding with each other but collaborating together. It could simply be gravity and the weight of the cyclist and bicycle. It could be the power of one's own state of mind that synergizes the body's muscles, or indeed the way one thinks.

On this latter point, and since we are talking about energies working together, there is the matter of systems thinking: the process of understanding how things, regarded as systems, influence one another within a whole. This 'whole' (effectively an eco-system) is a matter of health (the words come from the same root, the Old Norse word 'hale', where we get 'inhale', 'exhale', and 'holy'). 'Everything that breathes is holy,' wrote William Blake once upon a time.

So, what's the point of all this?

Well, as a cyclist bodying forth through the world under his own steam (as an open-flowing-system), he gathers other energies along the way, moves through them, breathes them, embodies them. Synergetics is a matter of fact for the cyclist. He begins to see the world not as isolated fragments, and himself as a separate individual, but as a collection of synergies and systems into which he is ineluctably insinuated.

Through this dynamic of thinking connectedly, inspired (breathed in) by the simple act of moving, the idea of symbiotics arises, that of evolving not in isolation from everything else, but rather, in unison with everything else. The notion of 'flows' becomes apparent, as does the notion of forces. Indeed, all of physics (mechanics especially), when on a bicycle, is quite literally 'in your face'. One realises quite quickly when cycling that loneliness (as an expression of a divestment of synergy) is an illusion, and a mutation that has arisen from our outsourcing of our own vital energies to machines.

The magazine New Scientist once stated, not so long ago, that the most ecologically friendly thing that anyone could do would be to not breed. I would argue that whilst this appears to be correct, it also appears to have some dark overtones. I would suggest before this that getting on your bike (and reconnecting to your vital forces), might actually lead to a clearer way of thinking that would presuppose a fresh way of looking at conventions and societal norms, thus, ineluctably, leading to intelligent and sensitive responses.

Red legs and a cattle grid with Neilston Pad in the background.