As much as it might be satisfying to my ego to be able to post profound pronouncements of the TRUTH, that would immediately be untrue. So, this is a reminder, that these notes are an exploration — something of a journey of discovery. And, as I expect I will do often, I will not only wander, but also revisit my starting point.
Patterns and Strategies
One of my underlying “notions” that I want to explore is an idea that strategy, in some form, is all around us, but often disguised as something else. I suspect it is less often conscious and rational and more often emergent, pre-existing, and implicit. That’s where the connection (at least in my mind) with “patterns” comes in. Let me see if I can make that clearer.
Looking at living things, we can often see how a species has a kind of “fit” with its environment and its situation, but often by doing very diverse things. Porcupines and antelopes are both herbivores. As such, they are always at risk of becoming “lunch” for some carnivore. Fundamentally, they are both doing the same things — eating plants and trying to avoid getting eaten. Yet they have adapted to solve these problems in dramatically different ways. In effect, they employ different strategies. The antelopes have allocated their “energies” into growing longer legs, powerful muscles, and a cardio-vascular system that can output energy at a tremendous rate when necessary. Meanwhile, back in the forest, the porcupine didn’t bother with all that. It has short legs, mediocre musculature, and a slower metabolism. It “chose” to grow sharp quills all over its body instead.
The antelope’s strategy is based on evading its predators with early detection and explosive speed. The porcupine went for a formidable defence. If not conscious “strategies,” these are certainly analogous to them.
Furthermore, I think these emergent strategies can be seen throughout the natural (non-artificial) world as recurring patterns. Both the nighthawk (a bird) and the bat (a mammal), with very different evolutionary paths, have converged on similar strategies of survival in response to the same conditions of survival. Given they both must locate and outmaneuver flying insects, they both fly fast, erratic paths using their long and flexible wings. Watching them in the evening sky, a watcher might be forgiven for mistaking one for the other.
In other words strategy is not always an artifice of consciousness. Accepting this, it is possible to invoke the concept of strategies in many places. Taken to the extreme, we can identify similar patterns in even inanimate things. Couldn’t a honeycomb be seen as a “strategy” for tightly packing circular holes? The unconscious patterns of petals around a flower, the growth of a nautilus shell, and the slow, spinning, spiral of a galaxy might be considered an inanimate response to the conflicting forces of compaction and expansion.
So, in summary, strategy may be a conscious, rational process of trying to think of a response to a problem or situation.
It may also be emergent through a process of trial and error, both in a human context and in nature. A Canadian management theorist, Henry Mintzberg, has given considerable thought to this “counter” idea of emergent strategy, and I intend to explore his writings further in the future.
Or strategy could be implicit, as with innate patterns in nature. A kind of “grain” to the texture of the universe that we can work with to our advantage and against at our discomfort or peril.
So, while I am not sure where this is leading,
“. . . Not all those who wander are lost . . .”
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring