Combining

Although a few of these pieces have been previously published in other places, I never meant for any of them to stand alone. Nothing in an ecology stands alone.

It is necessary to have an ensemble of all sorts of communication to meet ecology—intellectual, emotional, storied, non-verbal, and physical. The communications must be diverse enough to mee

I invite you into this ecology of communication. Pick the flowers, pee in the bushes, throw the stones, watch the clouds, sleep in the shade, and eat the fruit. I welcome you to wriggle and scratch in these pages and find rest and revolution.

At first, it appears that it is the parts of the system that must be made better or fixed.

Then, it becomes clear that the system is not in the parts — it is in the relationships between them.

So, it seems like it is the relationships that need to be made better or fixed.

But relationships, it turns out, are made of communication.

And then —

The communi

Alfred Korzybski famously said, “A map is not the territory . . .” (1994, p. 58). This phrase has been reframed into many other versions (but even more are needed).

The name is not the thing named.*

The menu is not the food.**

The nutrients are not the meal.

The word is not the thing it represents.***

The representation is not what is being represented.

What makes deductive sense from this moment is unlikely to continue to make sense. Being locked to a goal obstructs the ability to perceive other responses.