SISTEMICS AND NARRATION

Index

The Useful Narration ................................................................................................................. 6

A bit of phylogeny ........................................................................................................................ 9

Real Environment and Virtual Environment ............................................................. 12

Substance of Narration .......................................................................................................... 19

Before the Subject ..................................................................................................................... 22

The Narrating-I .......................................................................................................................... 26

The Other ...................................................................................................................................... 29

Emotions ....................................................................................................................................... 33

Listening ........................................................................................................................................ 36

Effective Narration ................................................................................................................... 39

Operating ....................................................................................................................................... 43

Emotional Codes ....................................................................................................................... 47

Ego .................................................................................................................................................... 50

Bisogna pensare ........................................................................................................................ 53

Narration at work

We all know what narration is, and so it seems that we could certainly begin to deal with it, in the relative certainty of a demarcation of the field of investigation sufficiently precise, at least to avoid misunderstanding about the object of our observations and reflections.

We all constantly have to deal with narrations, with someone telling us something, sometimes interesting at times just not: it is part of our daily lives, and certainly has many forms and places of manifestation.

We are all "producers" of narrations, more or less short, more or less long, we all felt the desire to speak with someone, to say something to someone, we all felt the satisfaction to have succeeded or the frustration for not having succeeded.

Many of us know that there are people who have made the narration an object of sophisticated studies, not to say scientific: linguists, semiologists, narratologists, masters of the art of narrating.

We will follow a path in good part different and divergent from this illustrious tradition, while welcoming the effort and the cognitive result, and simultaneously stating that these results have helped us very little, not to say anything, in improving not only our skills as storytellers but also our understanding and knowledge of the substance, which consists of any narration.

Of all the things, the distinctive aspects of human behavior, why should we deal with storytelling, with narration?

All right, it is a relevant ganglion of the daily interaction between humans, it is also of our daily work, in multiple and well-known forms, from the so-called inner discourse, the stream of consciousness of joycian memory, to reading, certainly it is relevant with respect to the themes and purposes of the pages collected on this site, to develop knowledge and awareness of how we function by using systemic knowledge, but are we sure that there are no more significant paths, arenas, problems in short, of greater importance?

Are we sure that there are no better alternatives to putting systemic knowledge at work (and benefiting from it), for a better quality of working life and daily life?

Pag. 2 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

In fact, dealing with the narration may seem a little frivolous, considering the relevance, and perhaps, the seriousness of other aspects that everyone has before them, from the difficult and much criticized planetary management of the pandemic, to the incessant progress of the gap between rich and non-rich, the environmental pollution and global warming, the painful issue of gender inequality and the increase in feminicides , just to name a few, in short, issues that, apparently, at least according to journalists and reporters, interest people.

The headings dealing with the narration are certainly considered, the press and the media deal with them, but certainly not giving it particular importance: therefore, why kick us out, voluntarily exil us in the territory of the little relevant, if not the totally irrelevant?

For the Systemic of Human Behavior it’s all the same, since in any expression of human behavior we constantly find at work our systems and neural codes, of course we could boldly welcome the cimento with any of the relevant themes or problems of our (and ancient, I daresay) time.

In part, certainly to a very modest and certainly incomplete extent, we ventured in that direction, the section of the site dedicated to anger is proof of this: of those annotations and reflections I am happy enough, they are good and bearer of truth, but . . but?

The "but" is the characteristics of the inevitable conclusions to which our knowledge leads us, the first being the "insolubility" of the problem in the short term, in the short term calculated, for example, as invading to cease CO2 emissions, a few years . . but even if they had longer terms, they would still be too short.

The problem could be solved, even in a short time, thanks to coordinated intervention supported by the governments of all the countries of our planet, analogous to the lockdown action, in more than one admirable sense, given the results . . temporary sure, but he got them.

In other and much more incisive words, the rapid and effective solution to all the thousand-year-old problems that the media still talk about and discuss with commitment is possible provided that it is exerted, on a planetary level, the strength, to force every human being to the desired behavior, just as during the lockdown.

Impossible? If we can conceive of this solution, identifying every single implementing hub (and this is possible, even if, to my knowledge, it has not

yet been done . . so far I am convinced that I myself, with the help of some other scholars, would be able to draw up a proper plan), we are not dealing with impossibility, but with enormous difficulties and with calculating the chances of success.

Exciting, but the result, for us, is to land on the shores of Utopia, a well-known island, among the best places of production and consumption of pleasant entertainment: I have nothing against entertainment, also for having developed an accurate (as far as I can) systemic analysis and having grasped and identified the elements that "oblige" to recognize its enormous importance for the proper functioning of the human subject , far from being able to consider it vacuous, exiential, ephemeral and useless.

The fact remains that trying these knots "obliges" each of us not to be able to do, in concrete terms, anything different from what is already done, namely weak and not incisive opposition, or a playground.

So let's fall back on the ephemeral and "light" narrative?

Like the one who, noticing that a gentleman is desperately looking for something in a bush under a lamppost, at night, asks him what he is looking for, and if he can help, getting in response "I lost the keys to the car, damn it. ." at which, he asks if he is sure that he has lost them right there, and not elsewhere, getting the answer "ah no, I am sure I lost them over there, where there are those bushes",so, always candid candid, asks but please, if you are sure you lost them over there, why then you look for them here, and getting flashed by the impeccable answer: "because down there it is dark and I see nothing"

I'm pretty sure it's not the same operation at all, and that this story, which I found funny many years ago, doesn't concern us: each of us is a storyteller, for ourselves and for others, acquiring knowledge and systemic awareness of our own narration is of considerable help in obtaining a better quality of our professional life and daily life.

On this website, the section dedicated to stress management presents clear evidence of this: even that is a chosen theme, basically, for the same reasons, there we can do something more and different from what we have done to date.

Let’s say it straightful: something more, something different, and above all better, more effective.

Pag. 4 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

And we could stop there, leaving it to each one to guess the profound connections between how and what we narrate, to ourselves and to our fellow humans, and the plausible effects of our narrative action on interaction with our fellow humans , as well as, in more than one sense, in interaction with ourselves, inseparable companions of ourselves.

Intuitively we can connect a greater and better mastery of narration, of dealing with narrations, with a better, so to speak, quality of our interaction with our fellow humans, with this being able to imagine of achieving more easily what we need.

Fellow Humans who populate our professional environment no less than the other environments with which we deal on a daily basis, similar on whose action, or non-action, depends a good part of our well-being, our chances of success.

To know exactly how to achieve a greater and better mastery in dealing with narration it is necessary to study, reflect, test, observe the results, correct, refine knowledge and skills, all operations that, to a large extent, we all know.

It is possible that, as we develop this specific knowledge, we realize that it would not be bad to be able to confront someone, perhaps an expert, or a study partner: the interaction with another, experienced or not, often proves to help in, so to speak, stabilizing the new knowledge that we are acquiring.

This aspect, accepted and widely recognized even by non-systemic scientists, has its own explanation, for us systemic it does not remain a simple statement, but is correlated with some specific properties of our systems, properties that it is good to know, to some extent, to facilitate our task, and also to be able to possibly intervene appropriately, of course to those who are interested, in the context of learning processes . . yes, human learning, a huge theme, which we're going to look at more deeply elsewhere, not here and not now.

Alone or in company, it's time to get on the road, starting with the fundamentals.

Milano, May 2019

The Useful Narration

Let's start with a tautology, consistent with our systemic premise: the narration, in whatever form and manifestation, is action, and therefore, necessarily, useful to survival.

The affirmation is certainly strong, but we have no escape: any narration, by definition, is useful.

Now the not easy task that awaits us is to be able to accord this statement, any narration is useful, with the common belief and common interpretation that can exist useful narrations and that there are also unnecessary narrations.

The evidence about the existence of unnecessary narrations, or at least so far valued as such, should be available to each of us: we found ourselves and I think any of us continue to be in situations where someone tells us, tells us something of totally useless compared to whatever parameter we can identify, at least regarding our position in that situation.

Totally useless for us: he or she repeats something already said, expresses a common place, focuses on a detail irrelevant to us, wanders in speech, the list, although not infinite, is long. Our feedback is certainly truthful, and yet it is not necessarily sufficient proof to deny the truth of our starting statement: Any narration is useful.

While the narration can be useless, under the practical aspect, for us, this does not deplete the issue, and certainly so far we do not put into play any new element related to the matter of which the narration is constituted.

Again, almost by definition, at a time when we acknowledge that narration is action, we must also acknowledge that such action is carried out by a human subject, and that in the first place the utility feature must be sought from the standpoint of the subject that narrates, and not from the point of observation of those who, in a certain sense, undergoes the narration.

Again, I think that none of us lack the experience of "suffered" narrations of which, despite the best and most intense efforts, we found impossible to trace any clue, if not proof, of usefulness to the narration subject.

The wisest among us, in these cases, frequently fall back on the partial inscrutability of the human soul, on the factual impossibility of fully accessing the mind of another, of knowing what is spinning in his head.

Pag. 6 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

Some scholars, that of the bizarre and the incomprehensibility have made matter of their work, try to forward along paths that seem to promise, if not to allow, to find the sense of what at first appears as a non-sense, maintaining a position in which, while accepting on the one hand the evident non-sense as non-sense, the obvious futility of the narration, on the other hand do not renounce the possibility of constructing, with the first narrator, a narration in which the initial non-sense is turned into a sense, identifying the usefulness initially untraceable.

Sometimes they succeed, at least to what I understand, sometimes not: psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, but also anthropologists, anthroposophers, and philosophers of various schools and orientations.

Not that the privilege is reserved to them, even to us it has happened to pass along those paths, looking for meaning (and usefulness) of a comment, of an observation, of a narration that has presented itself as non-sense, sometimes discovering that it made sense (and was useful), sometimes not.

A passenger of a bus every 5 seconds pronounces "eighteen. . . eighteen. . .

eighteen. ." After a while another passenger, intrigued by this repeated eighteen, approaches him, and asks him "how come you keeps repeating eighteen?", getting the answer "another who doesn't do his own business, nineteen. . nineteen. . nineteen… "

We place ourselves as honest researchers, not as wizards: not even we can overcome the obstacle that we encounter more or less frequently, constituted by not being able to know with certainty what passes through the mind of another.

But we can enlarge a little the understanding of how and why each narration is useful, with this plausibly increasing our chances, if we wanted to take those paths, to turn non-sense (uselessness) in sense (utility).

We need to equip ourselves with a few more elements about the matter of which any narration is made, putting for the moment in the background the question of usefulness: we acknowledge that human narration presents numerous and different forms and manifestations, Can we find a common root?

Attempting a phylogenetic reconstruction I think difficult and unlikely a starting point other than the ability to produce noises, sounds, abilities that

the ancestors of our species have acquired in the course of the evolution of biological life.

Pag. 8 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

A bit of phylogeny

A promising starting point is the ability to produce noises, sounds, abilities that the ancestors of our species have acquired in the course of the evolution of biological life.

Not only the subjects of our species have this capacity, a capacity that here and for us is one of the emergent properties of a living biological system: given that “capacity” is quicker to use in place of "emergent property of a biological system", we will continue to use “capacity” to avoid the long periphrase, but we will try to remember the meaning that we adopt here.

Little to no effort in recognizing and accepting that such property constitutes for the living biological system a huge competitive advantage over living biological systems that do not have such a property, that capacity, in the daily struggle for survival.

The production of acoustic signals, accompanied by the availability of a sensory system capable of intercepting those signals, greatly facilitates the coupling, rearing and protection of the offspring, the search for food, the protection of the territory, cooperation between subjects of the same species, and not infrequently between different species.

At this very primitive level we do not need the mind (whatever we mean by mind, unfortunately we will have to deal with it, but not now), we are dealing with "simple" motorial reflexes: the little bird chirps, while it jumps here and there, skillfully discovering what of which it feeds.

This form of life, the bird, the common sparrow, which we can certainly consider enormously simpler than the formidable complexity of the most primitive of our human ancestors, is, however, already enormously complex, formidably more complex than, for instance, the Eukaryote.

However, from the Eukaryote the sparrow has inherited almost everything, including the nuclear element of the motorial system, which in the course of billions of years has evolved, in that species, into the complex motorial system of the smallest and lowly common sparrow.

Not unlike what happened to us, in the evolutionary history of our species.

At the beginning, then, it was the sound. . maybe we were a little lazy, staring into the ability of a specialization of the motorial system, almost always integrated in the oldest digestive system, the point of beginning of the narration.

To a more accurate look, it seems more plausible that the starting point is located before, before the ability to produce sounds or noises, and it goes back to what we now lightly call emotion.

I say lightly because almost none of us are aware and keep in mind that, when we say emotion we indicate a process and a phenomenon of considerable complexity, whose origins arrive plausibly to the amoeba, to its expansion in search of nourishment and recoup on contact with harmful substances.

We probably have to do, from the outset, with the interweaving, with the integration of at least three systems: the motorial system, among the oldest, the nociceptive system and the proficeptive1 system .

The nociceptive system is that system that "deals" with signalling to the system of governance of the broader system of which it is an integral part (for us humans is our entire organism), and which constitutes part of its reference environment, of being present of a configuration of environment unfavorable, threatening, adverse to the survival of the major system (for us, still, our entire organism).

The proficeptive system, symmetrically, is that system that deals with signalling to the system of governance of the broader system of which it is an integral part (still our whole organism), and which constitutes part of its reference environment, of being present of a favorable, promising environment configuration supporting the survival of the major system (still, our entire organism).

In our common and everyday life experience, we acknowledge that the first one uses, so to speak, the language of pain: the more intense the threat, the more intense the pain.

The second uses the language of pleasure: the more intense the pleasure, the more favorable are the configurations that we meet.

1 Needless to look for this lemma, it is my neologism: in the literature there are references to the centers of pleasure, because the scholars seem not have realized yet that, for our safeguard, it is better, more efficient and effective, to count on two independent systems of classification of the environmental configurations which we are dealing with, limiting themselves for now to recognize the existence of the nociceptive system, and, for the rest, fiddling with the so-called pleasure centers.

Pag. 10 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

Certainly in the amoeba these two systems do not exist: their existence is conditioned by the existence of a sufficiently full-bodied neural system, and ours undoubtedly is, over 100,000 kilometers of neural filament and 10 to the 16 neural connections.

But also that of the Sparrow is enough to allow, so to speak, a sophisticated management of its seemingly simple and monochord chirping. In the chirping, in other words, we find intertwined operations of several systems, (sensory, proficeptive, nociceptive and motorial, at least) operations integrated by the neural system, and that result in plexus-sequences of actions governed, guided, by related neural codes.

We are far from E = mc2, but not so much: to get there we will have to reconstruct the intervention, the contribution of other systems and face the wonder of the virtual environment, extraordinary dowry delivered to each human being.

But we shall not and will not forget that the systems that govern and allow the simple (apparently) chirping of the sparrow are also among the systems that govern and allow one of the most extraordinary narrations of mankind, E = mc2

We shall not and will not forget that E = mc2 has its deep roots and its profound reasons and origins in the daily and inescapable commitment to survival, by-product of the work of the systems that preside and allow the survival of our species.

Real Environment and Virtual Environment Although pleasant, chirping does not fill the comprehension of the narration: we remain at the signal level, which is no small thing, but it is not enough.

How do we get to the narration, from the point where we have arrived? The simplest narration that we encounter, even made up of a single word2, still requires other systems and other environments: our real environment is not enough.

To be able to explain the simplest narration we are forced to introduce another environment, known to all of us, environment that exists in our brain boxes, and that we must necessarily call virtual environment.

I know that we run the risk of seeing it confused with those environments, or rather, with those configurations of environment generated by our modern electronic machines: however they are real, on them we use the same sensorial system that we use to deal with the "real world".

The only true virtual environment is that each of us owns by genetic endowment, emergent property of the neural system, environment in respect to which our species has developed systems for dealing with, I can anticipate with our huge profit and advantage.

Of the existence of our virtual environment, unique for each of us, we all have undeniable and direct confirmation from the earliest months of life: over the centuries it has received different names, many of which have generated confusion, to which here we try to pose some remedy.

We are so accustomed to live in it, it is so "spontaneous" to live inside, that very few realize the wonder in which they are, even less readily accept that, by definition, our entire conscious life, as it is commonly understood, happens in there.

Very few can tolerate thinking that our so-called reality is the fruit of the relentless work that each of us does in his/her own virtual environment: only with great effort we can distinguish the two environments, where constantly and simultaneously we live, much more and much better than a double life.

2 Of course we do not consider the words emitted by some species of birds, which remain, although appreciated, a variant of the simple signal.

Pag. 12 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

If the real environment, as it is easily demonstrable, for each living thing coincides with the whole of the life-saving actions3 it can perform, what is then the virtual environment? Why did our species select and transmit this wonder to each of us?

To be meticulous, and we are, the distinction and the coupling of system and environment is an artifì ce: the flow of our existence is produced as unity, all together, and it is a gamble to accept that that "things" happen within a time scan.

We can not really be sure that a thing called time really exists, but we are good enough to manipulate things according to what we know as time scan, to distinguish what goes first from what goes after, to perform correctly the actions that are appropriate in the before and in the after, in order to get what sustains our survival.

But we can never prove that there is a “before” and an “after”, independent of us human beings. For us it's okay, for us this way works better than others, always and anyway in the direction of guaranteeing (the more and the better we can) ourselves survival.

Even now, to be able to share these ideas, I use an artificial distinction, while (and also "while" is only an option of our systemic configuration) my existence, like that of all, flows undisturbed towards what we have learned to be, for us humans, his conclusion.

On the one side we are, and on the other side the environment (better, the environments) in which we live, between us (systems) and our environments, there is a continuous interaction: is there? But who or what produces it? The simple evidence, for us, of an “obvious” interaction is not enough, of course, unfortunately we can not go farther.

Our life and our death depends on the evolution of this interaction, the interaction between us and our environment: if we fail to steer the interaction between us and our real, physical environment, in order to obtain nourishment, to protect us from what physically harms us, we die, we cease to live.

Our virtual environment is not a simple "copy" of the real environment; after all, as well as the real environment, the environment that, as we say, 3 Paraphrasing Watzlavick, we cannot but act, at least as long as we are alive: even non-action is action.

surrounds our organism, is not, in itself, as it is for us: our real environment is a translation, correlated, generated by our sensorial system and our neural system.

Our virtual environment, I said, is an emergent property of our neural system, constituted, like the real environment, by the life-saving actions that we can perform: the main system that has as environment our virtual environment we will call it, for convenience, Thought System.

The thought system consists of the integrated set of life-saving actions that we can accomplish to modify the virtual environment configurations.

This step is critical and delicate: we constitute our virtual environment, generated by our neural system, emergent property of our neural system, as the environment of an additional emergent property of our neural system, which we call Thought System.

The "matter" of which both of them are constituted, virtual environment and thought system, is the same: neural codes.

Even if today we are not (and for a long time we will not be) able to identify exactly how it works, how the neural code is "written", we know enough to be able to count on the fact that any of our action (real and virtual) is guided by neural "instructions".

No more and no less than our mighty automatic machines: our common personal computer provides a very good approximation to what we need to be able to accommodate this new perspective with relative ease.

What we are reading now on a monitor or on a display is an effect generated by the deployment of an alphanumeric code, alphanumeric code that at this time steers the operation of the device we are using, code written by a programmer and integrated into the device we're using.

The fact that we are reading is the effect of very complex actions in progress, guided, steered by neural codes integrated in our system; since then we will still refer to these very special codes, for more clarity we'll call them neurograms, structured and stable plexus-sequences of neural instructions that guide our actions.

Was it really necessary for our ancestors to develop a virtual environment?

I honestly do not know how to respond, I just note that having a virtual environment is a formidable competitive advantage for our species, because it gives us the opportunity to generate virtual actions (to prepare neurograms that we could use later) without any danger, to experiment in Pag. 14 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

safety, to manipulate space and time at will and not just to undergo them, as inescapably happens in the real environment.

This makes possible to intervene, to act in the real environment to modify it, in order to obtain, with much more probability of success, thanks to the

"virtual study", what is needed for our survival.

Thinking on things

So far, the evidences on which we can count have provided relatively solid ground to our steps, at the end we have only transported the chirping intercepted from the real environment to the virtual environment.

Virtual environment within which we can, if not really hear it again, evoke it as we please, and make on the chirping a considerable series of operations: some we have seen in the part dedicated to phylogeny, others we are doing now, a piece of our narration relates to it, we can deal with it regardless of whether the chirping is produced in the real environment.

The operations we have accomplished and we are making about the chirping are actions guided by our neurograms, stable configurations of neural instructions: we called Thought System the integrated set of our neurograms, keeping it distinct from the neural codes, from the other neural instructions that make up the virtual environment and the object we're dealing with.

Although we do not know exactly how our neural system, so to speak, produces the virtual environment in which each of us is located (we have defined it emergent property of the neural system, it is technically correct, but it does not tell us anything about how this happens), however, we can accept that there is a difference between the neural instructions that

"produce" the virtual environment, and with it the virtual chirping, and the neural instructions (the neurograms) that we use to deal with the virtual environment and the virtual chirping .

The difference we can identify is provided by the evidence that the second, the, so to speak, operational neurograms, are at work on the first ones, themselves neural codes too, which in turn, with some evidence, are not at work on other neural codes.

These former neural codes have carried out and carry out the invaluable work of integrating and storing sensorial and motorial data produced by our systems more in direct contact with the real environment, coordinating the action of our organism to the flow of environment configurations.

They are the set of those elements that make possible the extraordinary wonder constituted by the unconditioned reflexes (let’s only think of the reflex of sucking for the newborn), integrating the data of the sensorial, motorial, nociceptive and proficeptive systems, in plexus-sequences of life-saving actions related to the real environment configuration which we are Pag. 16 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

dealing with, actions that change to changing of the environment configurations.

Plexus-sequences of actions that do not need thought, neither to be conceived in order to be implemented: it is the dance of life, organism and environment, living organism that does its best to survive, acting in the most appropriate way in correlation with changes in its real environment.

Real environment of which the organism itself is also part, of course, with the inevitable changes that affect it, changes that relate to what we call hunger, thirst, tiredness, sexual desire. .

The neurograms that we have gathered in the Thought System, in short,

"work" on the codes, elaborating useful variants, thus enriching our possibilities of action in view of our survival.

We have called it Thought System, and we have to account why we identify it as a system: from our premises we must be able to trace a stable configuration of a set of elements, at least some stable relationship between the elements that make it up.

We can identify some stable relationships between neurograms (and plexus of neurograms) that make up the Thought System by observing what the Thought System is firmly and regularly able to do with respect to the elements of the virtual environment which it has to deal with.

For example, it can eliminate, multiply, reduce in size, increase, warp, move, place them in different sequences, decompose them into parts, and reaggregate them into different "objects". .

The list is more extensive, but not much: if these (and other) are the actions that the Operational Thought System accomplishes, then we can deduce that there are stable relationships between the neurograms that constitute the Operational Thought System.

To deal with the virtual environment, obtaining modifications of which anyone of us can directly test, the Operational Thought System activates neurograms according to patterns of relationship, plexus sequences that we must necessarily recognize as guides, neural instructions that guide the different actions (operations) that the Operational Thought System can accomplish, in search of the best action for us, that action that can be developed in the real environment by our entire organism.

We will have to give up to take care of how from the virtual lab we return to the real environment, we carry out our tests, and then we go back to the lab

for further setups, and then again in the real environment, until we get the desired result, except for this last point: the real environment and our interaction with it, at the end of the process, coincides with the virtual environment and with the interaction that we have finished modifying.

The work is accomplished, but the point that is important to emphasize here is that the fulfillment of the work generally accompanies a more or less intense satisfaction: something that does not surprise us, since the accomplished work means we have been able to obtain an environment configuration favorable to us, condition punctually reported by our proficeptive system.

The aspect that is likely to be overlooked is precisely the one related to the identity, or at least strong similarity of the configurations of the environments that at that point we will have obtained: not only we did get a real environment configuration supportive and favorable for our existence, but we have obtained this in conjunction with that important condition which, for brevity, I preferre to define as respect for the Principle of Sameness.

It is an important condition because it is also integrated with our alarm and directioning systems, the nociceptive and proficeptive systems, systems that punctually record and so to speak "push" to the action in a univocal way, depending on the condition in which the two environments are substantially equal (proficeptive system) or are not at all similar (nociceptive).

In short, when real and virtual are equal or very similar we are "content" of the condition, when they are not then we are concerned: maybe it is a false alarm, but it is an ancient measure of security, to protect the good functioning of our thinking.

In addition, it is, simultaneously, a mighty, we can say, motivational source: if the two environments are not alike, we need to do something, everything we can to obtain sameness in the shortest possible time, for our sake.

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Substance of Narration

A long way to go remains, but we have come a long way: we can begin to propose a first alternative description of the substance of the narration, alternative when compared to those commonly circulating.

As we said at the beginning, the narration is an action, and, on the basis of our premises, any narration is therefore useful and has for its end to provide support to our survival: it is however a very special action, which is useful to understand, the best we can, what is made of and how it works.

Let us begin with the basic "substance", which we can accept as the common root of any form of narration, and which we have begun to identify: we are dealing with an action, necessarily guided (controlled, governed. .) by neural codes, by plexus-sequences of specific neurograms, which in turn are the fruit of the incessant work of what we called Operational Thought System , system struggling with the problem of identifying the best possible action for us in relation to the virtual environment configuration which it has to deal with.

The narration is therefore, in any sensitive shape, sound, visual, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic, the best result of an enormously complex elaboration carried out by our systemic machine, it is the best action that at that moment we can deploy to govern, with life-saving outcomes, our interaction with the environment for how it is configured at that time.

We could do many other and different things, our systemic machine could produce or assemble instructions, codes, plexus-sequences of neurograms to guide actions completely different from the narration: but no, among all the possible actions, all the possible elaborations, that and only that one takes, so to speak, body and life.

In the common language we could say that narration, narrating, is the best answer that we have been able to find respect, on the one hand, what we need, on the other on the conditions, the configuration of the environment in which we are.

Except that common language is likely to slip into a dead end, that almost all scholars of the last century have taken, and that we seek with every care to avoid: the dead end is called stimulus-response, accepting this connection between Environment and System means to grasp in the slightest part the richness of what is before our eyes.

And above all it means to get stuck, without hope of solution, in paradoxes and contradictions, from the separation between observer and observed object to the failure of the predictions necessarily based on the strict causal link.

Our real environment is the result of an enormously sophisticated elaboration, fruit of the process of evolution of the biological life of billions of years, in which an incalculable number of generations have succeeded, of experiments of adaptation of the biological life to the conditions of the environment, different for each species, different for each living being.

What we risk of no longer seeing, accepting the idea of "being responding"

to the pressing needs of which we can not free ourselves, is the wonder of the incessant dance in which we find ourselves, of our continuous changing to the changing of our environments, real and virtual.

The problem to which we must continually give "response" is of course to survive, not to change, but in the incessant and inevitable changes. . so it is for every form of biological life.

Where surviving means keeping our systemic configuration relatively stable, in a sense, despite the incessant and inevitable changes, what we have called autopoiesis; in curious opposition, which seems to be the hallmark of organic life, to what every existing thing seems condemned, visible and not visible, and that is to a constant increase of entropy. . at least so say our brightest human scholars.

To understand what happens to us, it is better to be on guard against making connections of the cause-effect type, stimulus-response type, they are often useful simplifications, which can be used without significant damage; better to try to maintain a perspective in which between what happens we can find connections more similar to dance-with, flow-with, change-with, the best approximations that I found going in search of the meaning of "correlation".

Not that there aren’t very good reasons, upstream of the common inclination to adopt the simple link cause-effect, is a long story, exciting and beautiful, that maybe I will try to narrate, not here and not now.

Narrating is the best way, to put it simply, with which and through which, at the moment when we narrate, we succeed and survive.

The first important and favorable condition that we are able to achieve, as signalled by our satisfaction and/or our minor concern, is a greater Pag. 20 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

similarity between virtual environment and real environment, even when, especially when what we are narrating relates to configurations of the real environment that we are not favorable and not yet changed in a sense favorable to us.

In the real environment our narration takes shape, element of the real environment that grants to our virtual environment, thus generating the first and most important benefit and support to our existence, to which many others are added.

Of course, this special life-saving action meets obstacles, and often seems followed by unpleasant effects, we will have to enter into detail later.

At this point we cannot postpone the questions concerning the narrating-subject, and with it those that concern the subjects who receive the narration: we must nevertheless bear a little longer, before taking care of the narrating-subject we are obliged to better identify the conditions of its existence.

Before the Subject

Is it not enough to exist, to be a person?

Usually, if we have nothing better to do, we do not deal with these philosophical contortions.

Maybe someone came to mind Cartesio (Rene Descartes, my high school teacher was inflexible on that), with his I-think-so-I am, or maybe Damasio, more recent, with his I-feel-so-I am (in the sense of feeling emotions), but in our daily life, for us, the answer is obvious : we are alive, we exist, of course we are persons, I-you-she-we-you-they, it’s elementary.

We quickly get used to wealth and good health, who has it does not think, only when we lose one or the other we discover how complicated, complex, everything that revolves around us, the conditions that allow us to feel good: even for our purposes , we must abandon the restful condition of the obvious acknowledgement of the person's elementary existence, and start from farther away.

No one knows exactly how we function, thought, memory, learning, attention, conscience are only terms that indicate something that is not visible to us, but that connects, links pieces of our real environment: something that is certainly connected to our neural system, even if no one can say exactly how.

In short, we use conjectures, to orient ourselves and try to get along, the best we can, in dealing with our operations: if on the one hand we have to resign ourselves to the long time of scientific research, of which it is not possible today to have even an idea of term, awaiting certain and finally explanatory answers, on the other hand we can try to improve our provisional conjectures.

To get to the Narrating-I, we have to equip ourselves with something more than we have so far deployed, we need to further articulate and enrich our conjecture into a conjecture that helps us to solve some paradoxes otherwise insoluble, and to compose, link elements otherwise inconsistent: in short we need another system.

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Among the paradoxes and contradictions we can certainly place what we call leadership, and the relief that derives from "good" psychotherapies: our autopoietic nature, whose feedback is indubitable, almost "objective", is incompatible with both.

In the face of the obvious existence of the ego, we fumble when we try to explain the "functioning" of the couple, of the group, and definitely surrender to the emergence of the multiple personality; consciousness, awareness and unconscious provide infinite hard times.

It is keeping in mind also these elements that we have decided to equip ourselves with a conjecture, the systemics, relatively more articulated than those commonly available today, and that we now integrate it with another system, the Symbolic Thought System, whose coupled environment is constituted by the problems that the Operating Thought System, integrated with all the other systems mentioned before, failed to resolve .

It is in our common observation to distinguish, with less or more ease, the thoughts that concern things and relationships between things, from thoughts that concern thoughts that concern things and relationships between things: thought on thought is other from thought about things.

Nothing new, an excellent and complete collection of the ways of thinking about thought is available to us for over two thousand years, those chapters that collect all the possible variations of three types of operations: Metaphor, Metonymy and Synechdoche.

One of the most common deadlock of operational thinking is to treat the part as if it were the whole: the phlogiston has dominated the medical diagnosis for centuries, before anyone came to mind that there could be anything else, and began to go in search of viruses.

With a little patience and a lot of time we could identify for each variant a

"concrete" example: if the patience is not lacking, the time instead is, the point seems solid enough to allow us to proceed.

And it is also and especially in the control of interaction with others, with The Other, with those configurations of environment in which we find our fellows, that things are often difficult and incomprehensible, where the solutions of the Operational Thought System often prove to be ineffective, and where the Symbolic Thought System manages to attenuate, if not solve, the difficulties.

Having to deal with each other, with others, is for us the focus of greatest interest, we must necessarily articulate the description of the configuration of the Symbolic Thought System a bit more: a little while ago we defined the reference environment of the Symbolic Thought System as constituted by the problems that the Operational Thought System can not solve.

This is an abbreviation, a simplification of the complex path that we should have done to be able to account for how the difficulties that our systemic machine faces are treated, for now we take it like this, and go ahead: the first problem to solve seems to be who or what is the Other.

But we can not avoid, when having to deal with this, more or less simultaneously, to tackle also with the correlated key of any Other we can identify: yes, the Ego, of course.

For the Operational Thought System, the Other and I are only two sub-configurations of the broader environment configuration, two "objects"

integrated into the virtual environment which it has to deal with: self-awareness, constitutive of the subject, the constitution of the “object I” as a thinking subject, self-conscious is one of the fruits of the work of the Symbolic Thought System, system that precisely deals with the problems that the Operational Thought System can not solve.

So we see the gradual stratification and development of our ability to generate Neurograms, (relatively) stable neural codes of our actions: from hereditary unconditioned reflexes, endowments of the first four systems (

motorial, sensorial, proficeptive and nociceptive ones), to the conditioned reflexes, contribution of the emotional system, which we will have to re-examine shortly.

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From the conditioned reflexes to the re-conditioned reflexes, the result of the contribution of the Operational Thought System; and from these to re-re-conditioned reflexes, spectacular openness provided by the Symbolic Thought System.

And now let's see how we may tackle with the Ego and the Other.

The Narrating-I

“"You'd better do as you were told."

I hope to be able, at least a little, to make the idea of the wonderful complexity that lurks even behind the simplest human things, the brief advice I have adopted as the beginning of these observations is no exception.

Sooner or later each of us met it, in that exact form or in one of its many variants, perhaps followed it, perhaps not: it is a short narration, here rendered in the form of written text, it is a finding, in an undefined time and place someone has said that.

The question I pose now is who said what to whom, and for each of us the answer to the first part is different, the answer to the second is common: he (she) said it to us, nothing difficult or mysterious.

Things are a little more complex than that, let's see how we can get by: let's start with the first who.

Regardless of the identity, the finding, as a sort of prehistoric graffiti, is evidence of an action that a similar one has accomplished: now we know that, like any action, this also has a salvific nature, aimed at the survival of Narrating Subject.

It is an action that tends to control the interaction with the environments in order to obtain conditions conducive to survival: even if we cannot know exactly how this can be in detail, from the standpoint of the narrating subject, we know that it can only be this way.

We have accepted that a first benefit that the narrator obtains consists in making similar, closer, real environment and virtual environment, and it is certain also possible that our obeying the advice, in the prediction of the narrator, relates to the setting of configurations of the real environment which are more favourable than those observed at the time when it produces its short narrative.

Possibility that identifies a second benefit. We try to adopt the standpoint of the narrator: I tell you, you better do as you're told.

While we do this, in the real environment, we have clear certainty of ourselves and equally clear certainty of the other: our organism produces a relatively articulated sequence of sounds, action driven by plexus-Pag. 26 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

sequences of neurograms, identified by the final elaboration of our Symbolic Thought System.

Now we know that, simultaneous to the presence of the other in our real environment, we had and we have to deal with the other in our virtual environment, as element of our virtual environment, as (at least) part of a problem to be solved.

The Operational Thought System did not make it, could not find the solution to the problem that all other systems have brought him, he could not find a way to ensure that the other did as he was told, that he followed the instructions that had been even delivered.

And we solved that the best thing to do was to warn him.

If, looking at the scene in the real environment, no one can seriously have doubts about who says what to whom, less easy it is the matter once conveyed in the virtual environment, although certainly not impossible to solve.

It is good to remember that the virtual environment is not a copy of the real environment, but it is the result of the elaboration of our neural system: we are dealing with an equivalent of a "concerto" of Neurograms, with a relatively orderly flow of activation/ deactivation of plexus-sequences of neurograms.

With this in mind, in this concert we can serenely assume that there is a differentiation between the configurations of plexus neurogram sequences that correlate with the ego in the real environment, and the configurations that correlate to the other.

Who we are, what we are, what I am, at this point of our reflections, it is relatively simple to say: We are the set of all the life-saving actions that we carry out and that we can perform, the first observable in the real environment and guided by the correlated plexus-sequences of activated neurograms, the second in some way partially "observable" in our respective virtual environments.

Including the real action, although not visible to date, which models, builds, constitutes the other in our virtual environment, also guided by the related plexus sequences of neurograms.

The ego related in the real environment, which we can identify in the virtual environment, is the whole of the plexus-sequences of neurograms that guide our actions.

And I think we can take one step further, and venture further enrichment of our conjecture, based on our constant feedback, in the real environment, of the relative stability of conduct that we look forward to observing others and ourselves, stability that we also call character, personality, distinctive aspects of how people act in doing what they do.

The virtual ego has a considerable related stability, sufficient to identify it as an egoic system, consisting of all the neurograms that guide our actions, the ones we inherited from our parents, cloned or copied from our fellows, forged by trial and error.

We need to place it adequately in our systemic conjecture, the best solution is to consider it as emerging property of the symbolic thought system 4: the reference environment of the EGO System therefore remains the virtual environment.

We also need to try, at least, to identify which distinctive relationships between the constituent elements, in order to meet the condition that allows us to consider the EGO system as a system: among the constituent elements of a system must exist identifiable relations.

In observing a subject in the real environment the task is quite easy, its configuration, the nose, the mouth, the eyes, how tall, it changes over the years, but generally not too much and not so quick to prevent us from recognizing it : with the Ego System things don't seem as easy.

But we're going to make it.

4 This decision is consistent with the general theory of systems, as it has been configured in recent decades, too long to decline here punctually the passages. For more in-depth I would refere you to the magnificent collection of writings curated by Lucia Urbani Ulivi, Strutture di Mondo, 3 excellent volumes published by Il Mulino, 2010, 2013,2015

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The Other

"You look good"

We all have someone who has told us this, more or less recently: another, someone tells us that he finds us in good shape.

An Other who? We are accustomed to place the other according to certain different modes, but not so different: degrees of kinship, degrees of closeness, degrees of knowledge, degrees of importance, degrees of confidence, degrees of trust are among the most common scales.

The action that correlates to "I find you really good" also depends on the position that the Other has on our scales, action that we can place, provisionally, in a point of the continuum that unites, at the extremes, acceptance and rejection.

Now we are confident in quickly moving from the real environment (where someone tells us we look really good), to the virtual environment, where our Ego system is continually at work: all the instructions on how to deal with a configuration of the environment of that type are identified, activated and flowing with the precision and speed necessary to control the proper interaction with the Other.

Interaction that we observe, in the real environment, simply and easy flowing, matter of seconds, often of fractions of second: yet the amount of information to be elaborated is very considerable.

According to some scholars, the prevailing way of processing information of our neural system is quantum, because the serial processing, by series of data and options, would take too long, and we would not be able to

"respond" so promptly and in a reasonable way in the very short time that instead, normally, we employ 5.

Among the conditions that allow this particular type of calculation, there is the grouping by plexus of data, as far as I understood: in short, to "respond"

we do not take into consideration all the possibilities, we consider plexus, groupings of combinations of data and possibilities.

5 Among the few quotations of the work of others which I venture to make, I refer to a magnificent article of Tito Arecchi, Congetture Quantistiche, raccolto in Strutture di Mondo vol.2, Il Mulino 2013

We are still looking for the elements that can allow us to consider the ego as a system, of the relationships that must exist between the elements of the Ego System in order to allow us to consider it a system: unfortunately we have to rely on converging clues, and, for the mandatory evidence that scientific research can provide, to wait to have tools and methods of investigation far more advanced than those available today.

Even in our common daily life there is no lacking of clues: in observing the behavior of others (and sometimes even ours), it happens quite frequently to note that the same person acts in ways so different to make us think that they are different people, as if they were gone through some sort of transformation.

Or even to find curious similarities: he speaks like his father, walks like his mother, has the laughter of his grandfather, plays like his new professor, as her new friend.

Scientific research prohibits the use of introspection, of self-observation, and rightly so: yet I do not find it so illegal to suggest to jot down, among the clues, even the common experience of self-reproach, form of the flow of our conversations with ourselves, where, with greater evidence than other conditions, we can describe the virtual scene as inhabited by a part of us that reproaches another one.

Scientific research accepts, at least until today, the reliability of a diagnosis of multiple personalities: the same person, simply put, presents at times different ways of conduct that are traced back to different personalities, so different that one does not know, don't remember what the other did, Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hide, to be clear.

This is generally considered a serious pathology, in our normality we are accustomed to correlate a single personality, perhaps multifaceted and variegated, to each person.

We are accustomed to consider ourselves (which is scientifically not legal, given that to do so we must resort to self-observation) and others (objects observable in the real environment, thus scientifically valid observation) as a substantial unit, not as a substantial multiplicity: we transform the observable multiplicity into facets, variegations, contiguous aspects that do not violate the principle of unity.

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The systemic conception helps us to find a different way out to the flat contradiction between being one and being many: we are integrated systems, we are biological units constituted by integrated systems.

So there is no substantial difference between the "normal" personality (one and identifiable) and the multiple personality: even considering it a pathology, as the official science authorizes us to do, we can however use it to shed some light on the so-called normality.

We can conjecture that the different personalities that manifest themselves in such a glaring manner in the subjects afflicted by that pathology, personalities that function one independently of the other, alternating with the guidance of the biological unit, are the result of a more rudimentary systemic integration, so to speak, than that which seems to enjoy the majority of people.

An integration that we could describe in those cases as obtained by juxtaposition of complex elements, juxtaposed plexus of plexus-sequences of neurograms, placed next to each other, each preserving its autonomous configuration: configurations that manifest themselves in their diversity when they attempt to govern the relationship with the environment (real and virtual) configurations in which the biological unit is located, and which can only be alternate, one excluding the other sharply.

Those same complex elements, differently integrated, are what correlates with what we call normality: a more sophisticated integration, as it were, not juxtaposition, but cross-reference, connection, call in play, between configurations and between the elements that make up the configurations.

Elements that, again, are nothing but our plexus-sequences of neurograms, guiding codes of life-saving actions, hereditary and learned, developed by the biological unit in its meeting with the environments in which it lives, to which, as a system, it refers.

For our purposes, awaiting a certification of neuroscientific research, recognizing the existence and the contribution of the Ego System allows to develop strategies and solutions otherwise impossible: the first, and more importantly, is to identify a scale of placing the other otherwise inconceivable.

Basically, the other is placed in a continuum that unites the extremes of the condition of being constituted by elements completely integrated in the Ego

System and the condition of being constituted by elements totally unrelated to the Ego System.

It is good to remember that the Ego System is made up of all the neurograms that govern life-saving actions: possible example of "real" placement near the extreme of complete integration in the Ego System is the human falling in love.

The second strategy/solution allowed by recognizing the existence and contribution of the Ego System is is the possibility of considering the Ego (the Ego System itself) as a harlequin, as a theatrical company, as a system that integrates the activation of plexus of plexus-sequences of neurograms among them integrated, i.e. collected in plexus, with this "responding" more adequately to the needs of elaboration and deployment of the life-saving action.

Plexus of plexus that plausibly are configured (and then activated) by elaborating and stabilizing what we receive from our fellows in terms of actions of help and support to our survival, embodied by those who meet in the real environment: parental figures, teachers, masters, friends, are among the first and most important contributors to patch our Harlequin, to form our theatrical company, to give shape to our personality.

And to our personalities.

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Emotions

"Good morning!"

A good beginning bodes well, also this greeting, short and common, since its first notes indicates what will probably follow.

We are all more than trained to constantly use emotional decoding, to grasp as quickly as possible the intentions of others, and know as soon as possible how to orient ourselves, how to arrange with respect to what probably will follow.

We all feel emotions, we all use emotions, we use our emotional abilities, with greater or lesser success, as we use our many other abilities.

What we do with our emotions is partly the result of inheritance transmitted to each of us through DNA, in part it is the result of a very long

"training", training that begins at our birth, if not before, when we still float in the amniotic liquid.

Can we treat the emotions as we treated the thought? See them as declinations of the interaction between an Emotional System and its environment of reference? If so, what is the reference environment of the emotional system, and what are the relationships between the emotions integrated by and in the Emotional System?

A quick search allows to "discover" that we have, in any language, several dozens of names that indicate, each, a specific emotional condition, a specific emotion: scholars have identified a small number of fundamental emotions, distinguishing them from the others, which are considered minor variants or combinations of the primary emotions, a sort of emotional colours theory.

Joy, Fear, Love, Disgust, Shame, Anger and Surprise are generally recognized as primary emotions, so to speak fundamental: for us systemics is not difficult to accept that emotions are simply the reflex, sophisticated and evolved, of the functioning of our nociceptive and proficeptive systems.

Degrees of pain and degrees of pleasure integrated in the neurograms that control the interaction with the environment of our sensorial systems, placing the organism to the basic actions of removal from the threatening environment configurations, and approaching the environment configurations which support our survival.

That's it.

And that's a lot.

The competitive advantage assured by our focus on the life-saving action in thousandths of a second is formidable, the possibility of literally cloning the actions of others, of arranging ourselves to group actions, allowed by our Mirror Neurons (sensational discovery of the Neurosciences, 2005) is a further, extraordinary, enhancement inherited from our species.

Up to empathy, a key "ingredient" for the good governance of interaction with our peers, again allowed and supported by neural mirroring, for the ability to offer and receive help for otherwise impossible tasks, including learning.

That is, to generate new and better, more effective, neural codes, neurograms.

Some stable configurations of relationship between emotions are recognizable, which allows us to accept, among the systems of which we are made, also the Emotional System: for example, the plexus of emotions called into play in the primary interaction Mother-Child, in the mating interaction, in the food behavior, in the interaction with the group we belong, including the hierarchy .

To experience emotions, to use these special neurograms, it does not seem that we need a virtual environment, indispensable to thought systems: the environment of reference of the Emotional System seems to consist of the continuous flow of neural systems processes related to the functioning of the sensorial system, integrated with the processes related to the nociceptive and proficeptive systems.

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Impossible to separate narration from emotion, impossible to ignore the contribution of the Emotional System to any human narration, to the thought, to the forming of the Other, to the control of the interaction with the real environment and with the Others.

Our response to "Good Morning" also depends, much, from the contribution of the Emotional Systems of those who narrates and those who greet the narration: in our common and daily experience depends on how the Narrator says it, if in a certain way then good things may follow, if in another way trouble may be in sight.

On the Other’s side, of those who receive the narration, much depends on who is for the Other the Narrator, if friend or foe: again, if the other is friend or foe, primarily, in hundredths of a second, it is the Emotional System to indicate it clearly.

***

Now we have in play all our systems, and we can count on some knowledge about their contribution to our control of interaction with our environments: motorial, sensorial, proficeptive, nociceptive, emotional, operational thought, symbolic thought, egoic.

Each of them has a reference environment, we recognize our continuous and assiduous frequentation, simultaneous, with the real environment and with the virtual environment, and the prevailing effects related to the conditions in which the two environments are similar, if not equal and coincident, or dissimilar.

Too complicated? It's probably even more complex than that, but we can't give up on the path: the next step is to put two systemic units into play, the Narrator and the Other, and focus on some of the conditions that allow the Other to welcoming the narration of the Narrator.

Listening

Now several years ago, a professor of applied psychology of a well-known Italian university told us this story.

All good religions be blessed and honored!

The river broke the bank and began flooding the countryside, the water rose rapidly: John the farmer, pious and godly man, took refuge on the first floor of his house, praying for divine providence to remedy.

Soon the rescue boat arrived, "Come John, come with us, the water continues to rise!" and John replied: I remain here and pray to divine providence.

The water continued to rise, and soon flooded the first floor of the house, John took refuge on the roof; the rescue boat passed again, "Come John, come with us, the water continues to rise!" and John, again, replied: I remain here and pray to divine providence.

And the water kept rising, and John had to sit at the top of the roof and hold onto the chimney; the rescue boat passed again, "Come John, come with us, the water continues to rise!" and John, again, replied: I remain here and pray to divine providence.

But the water went up again, and John the farmer drowned; because he was pious and devoted man, he ascended into heaven, and, when arrived at the heaven’s door, he complained to St. Peter, strongly protesting, for the Divine Providence had not listened to his fervent prayers.

St. Peter, worried, went to be sure how things had gone, entered the immense room where there were endless columns of stacked files, reached the desk of Divine Providence, which was, as usual, very busy: "John the farmer says that you do not listened to his prayers. .

Divine Providence, adjusting the thick glasses on the nose, quickly delved in the archives and back triumphantly by St. Peter: "Here you go, flood, John the farmer, sent the rescue boat thrice!"

We can take it in many ways, I think we all happened to find ourselves saying to ourselves: Ah, if only I had listened. .

For us systemics, at this point, it is easy to see that things are a bit more complicated than that: we are autopoietic, our codes, our neurograms, which guide our life-saving actions are precious and complex, they are elements of our Ego-System, fruit of inheritance and of great and prolonged personal labors.

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The operations that allow us to accept a different advice from ours, to integrate different instructions, neurograms in our Ego-System are far from simple and straightforward, the conditions under which we can do it are precise.

Let's see some, without the pretension to exhaust the question here: the first condition, apparently obvious, is that we are dealing with a configuration of environment (real or virtual) that we recognize as threatening, as punctually reported by our nociceptive system.

The fact that the configuration is really, "objectively" threatening per se, is not enough: driving a car, in the chaotic traffic of the cities, is objectively threatening, but many of us do it, chatting quietly with the traveling companion.

And we can do that because we have very efficient neurograms, laboriously learned and long tested: in short, for us it is not a threat to our survival, indeed, it is a way to survive better.

The second condition, integrated with the first, relates to the other, the other offering the advice, the instruction, the neurogram, in short, the narrator: we systemics know that the Other is the whole of the neurograms that we use or we can use to deal with him/her and get what serves our survival.

And we have learned that each Other is different and unique compared to any Other, and that, for us, a first decisive point is: where it is in the continuum that unites the condition of being made up of all the elements, fully integrated in our egoic system, to the condition to be made up of elements totally unrelated to our egoic system.

My dentist is male, tattooed, wears an earring and does not have a face that I like very much, but he is very skilled with the anesthetics, and his cures are impeccable, as far as I know. My son is wonderful, practically perfect.

The brotherly friend is wise, expert in life, amusing, witty and shrewd. The colleague is competent, but it is better not to give him the opportunity to hijack my client. The pharmacist on the corner is polite, the neighbor is rowdy, a bit intrusive and nosy.

In the complex constitution of the Other we find a further line of classification, Helper, to put it simply, according to degrees corresponding to our (complex and partially unconscious) evaluation of the support, of the help we believe we may receive.

Many people use to say: he hears what it wants to hear, understands what it wants to understand, as if we need the intervention of a will (for us systemic will does not exist, we call will something that we attribute to the Other, but which has no origin in the Other, on which the Other has no power) to determine what to listen to and what not.

Our neural machine makes very complex and very often exact calculations, using the neurograms it has, to determine which plexus-sequences of neurograms will guide the life-saving action: we can use the neurograms (the advice) of another only if the other one is, for us, a Helper.

And therefore, more important and overriding than the narrator's abilities to produce an effective narrative ("Come John, come with us, the water continues to rise!"), to be able to accept the advice, the indication of an Other, it is whether or not the Other is a Helper, with regard to the difficulties we are facing.

The first measure of effectiveness of the narrator is not related to the narrative that he/she will be able to put in play, but it is precisely to what extent the narrator can be recognized by the Other as a Helper, with regard to the difficulties that the Other is facing, in the real environment and in the virtual environment.

How do we do it? What can be done to be recognized by the Other as a Helper, starting from the condition in which, evidently, the Other does not recognize us as such, and therefore does not listen to us? Mission impossible?

It is not impossible, since we all have a certain number of Helpers, acquired during our life. There are some indications, success can’t be guaranteed in all cases, but we can do something to increase our chances of success.

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Effective Narration

I have a dream.

Effective Narrator is who is welcomed as a Helper, the effective narration consists in the presentation of elements (pronounced words, writings, symbols, static or dynamic images, objects, actions) that are acknowledged and welcomed as a help in the context of the needs of those who accept the narration.

Here we consolidate a central point, with respect to the efficacy of narration: we cannot separate narration from narrator, as systemic entities our elaboration proceeds by integrating elements related to both aspects.

Not that the rest, everything we think we know about the good wrapping of narration by the narrator, is useless or irrelevant: in our perspective the centrality is attributed to help and being helped.

Effective compared to what?

Efficacy indicates the relationship between a target and a result, so far we have focused a condition of efficacy, independent of contexts, environments and contents, a criterion of evaluation that we adopt in observing the narrators and the recipients of narrations.

We have entered the systemic with the aim of finding practical solutions, practical answers, not just for the sake of entertaining ourselves on the wonders of our systemic nature: now let's try to start grounding what we have collected.

I opened with a note quote, "I Have a Dream", believed to be among the most effective narratives in the history of the West: we know that it refers to a specific context, which synthesizes desires and sufferings, which indicates a line of action, and so much more.

In our daily lives we do not generally deal with issues of that magnitude.

However, we have daily to deal with issues, with problems, with needs, which, albeit of a much more modest scope, are for us, by definition, important: our narration, from our point of view, is effective insofar as it succeeds in obtaining the result of solving problems and satisfying the needs which we are dealing with.

As Narrators the positive proof of success is constituted by the evidences that we manage to obtain relative to the reception that our interlocutor has reserved to our narration: obeys, takes into account, appreciates, integrates,

in short, it acts adequately in the real environment so to help us in obtaining conditions which favorably support our survival (and all its derivatives and related).

As recipients and receptors of the narration, the proof of efficacy is quite similar, with the only difference of concentrating the feedback on the adequacy of our action, in the virtual environment and in the real environment: a doubt eliminated, a new connection detected, a better result, many are the forms of feedback to which we can access.

***

Every form of human communication is a narration, no matter how short or broad, no matter what expressive medium is used: in every communicative act comes into play the work of our systems, in every communicative act comes into play the Helper and the help.

We have defined “help” what contributes positively to obtain, for us, conditions that favorably support our survival (and all its derivatives and related): that is, at the foot of the aid, of course, we have placed the need and all the its derivatives and related, including desire, which of need is one of the forms of expression.

Aware, with this, that we have opened an enormously complex and variegated front: each of us has direct and daily evidence of the innumerable forms of needs and desires that our fellows express, as well as evidence of the presence of needs and desires that are not expressed and manifested, either by conscious decision of our interlocutors or unconsciously.

Each of us has direct and daily evidence of the frequent "incorrectness" of judgement (our and others) about what helps and what does not help, and the frequent dead ends where we enter when we try to convince someone he/she is wrong,

Maybe now we will bring better attention, we will try to be better Helpers, but the question remains: how can we manage the enormous variability (and often incomprehensibility, for us) of the needs, the desires and the evaluations and the judgments on what helps and what does not help.

Some scholars (not systemic, that I know of) have tried to provide a sort of map, classification of needs, among the best known there is certainly Maslow, and his pyramid: the greater merit of that schematization consists in its apparent simplicity and clarity, generally perceived as of considerable Pag. 40 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

help in trying to dominate an otherwise savage, intricate and incomprehensible territory.

In a more or less direct, but not less significant way, there are many scholars who over the centuries have proposed theories of need, basically all those who have dealt with human behavior, because a “theory of needs” is indispensable to give sensible answer to any question about the human acting: Freud, Piaget, Darwin, Leibniz are the first ones that come to my mind, but the list is very long, and also includes contemporary scholars, among all Humberto Maturana, to whom systemics owes a lot.

We too are using a theory of needs: from the beginning we have put to the foundation of everything, basically, the survival of the individual and the species.

For us systemics, each form of need and desire derives and articulates the fundamental need identified in survival.

"Good Morning Mary"

"Good Morning John"

"How are you?"

"Kind of good, only a nasty cold, nothing. . How are you? ""Eh, cool too, season ills. ."

"I apologize for not having responded immediately, when you called me on the phone I was in session. . What can I do for you? "

"I wanted to ask if you could give me the access keys to the Joor platform. ."

"The keys are located in an email stored in the Joor folder of the Administration account.. But the platform is no longer accessible for months. .

"

"I just want to download the recorded data, they certainly have kept the archives, so we can complete the documentation. ."

"They Should have kept the archives, the account has been disabled, and even with the keys you can no longer access. The data had already been downloaded, you can found them in the folder Joor 2019 of the archive that I sent a few months ago "

"I understand, but the access keys… where can I find them, in the email archive there is too much stuff and you get lost.."

Can we understand, identify the connections between the two narratives and the satisfaction of the fundamental need identified in survival?

Can we understand, to have an idea why John's narrative does not seem to be effective?

With a little imagination, even without having other data and context information, we can link the behavior of the two storytellers to the search of the satisfaction of the need for survival.

And, recalling the Sameness Principle, the genetically determined necessity of keeping aligned real environments and virtual environments (see

"substance of narration", January 30, 2019), we can grasp that Mary's insistence on the access keys can be an effect of his way of keeping aligned what she has in her virtual environment with what she finds in her real environment.

Genetically determined necessity means need, of course: the principle of similarity articulates the fundamental need for survival with respect to the obvious preferability that our systems function adequately.

And with that we get to the systemic needs, we have to deal with them.

Pag. 42 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

Operating

Should I be happy, good health, family in harmony, wonderful children, economically we are well, difficulties and turbulence are long behind our shoulders, clear and serene horizon. . But no, I'm sad and unhappy.

I have a good job, I like it and I do it willingly, the career proceeds satisfactorily, good health, family in place. . But I still feel worried, in ten years which situations I'm going to be in? I know I shoudn’t worry, but I can't do without it.

System, environment, survival and reproduction: these are the cardinal elements, the cornerstones on which all our arguments stand.

Survival and reproduction, of the individual and of the species, relentlessly cross every system of which we are constituted, every system of which any biological entity is constituted: each system, to survive and reproduce, in order to function, must find fulfilled very specific conditions.

Human respiratory system? Enormously complex, it depends on the operations of many other systems, muscular, nervous, cardio-circulatory, lymphatic, skeleton, epidermis, food and digestive, all elements of its environment. . And of course by respirable Air, a mixture of gases whose composition can vary within narrow limits, light and heat within limits of variation quite narrow.

As long as one of the elements of the system and/or the environment fails, it does not respect our limits or does not function to determine the end of the system, the block and the disintegration.

The framework of the conditions of existence, of survival and of reproduction constitutes the punctual reference of what we call need: the condition of need coincides with the more or less cyclical failing of the satisfaction of one or more of the conditions of existence and survival.

What about our "superior" systems? The emotional system, the operational thought system, the symbolic thought system, the Ego system? Not even these can naturally escape the need to satisfy, to find fulfilled their specific conditions of existence and survival, to the need to "function" adequately in order to sustain and to some extent ensure the survival of our entire organism.

And we come to the point: what needs should the narrator know and satisfy in order to be effective?

We know that the exact answer to this question lies there, where narrator and receiver meet in the real environment, on a specific day and at a no less precise time: it depends on the configuration of the conditions and the elements that the receiver is trying to put in place, configurations that continually vary.

So an answer is impossible here? In the strictest sense it is not possible, what is here possible still has value: we can prepare ourselves to recognize some types of need, some recurring patterns of configurations of elements and conditions that all, cyclically, with greater or less frequency, meet.

The first and perhaps most "fundamental" is the need to function adequately: each system must find the feedback of its systemic integrity, and, of course, can find it only through its functioning, working.

All our systems, so to speak, "arise" to solve problems, to contribute to develop an effective line of action with respect to the control of the configurations of the environment which we are dealing with, configurations in constant change.

The wonder of our virtual environment, and the extraordinary manipulations that we are allowed, make practically inexhaustible the

"material" on which each system can work: in other words, if the real environment does not present problems, it does not provide work material, nothing bad, the virtual environment is inexhaustible source, as long as we are alive.

Thus, we find a first part of the understanding of the curious unhappiness of the lady in the partial absence of matters on which to get to work; just as we find elements that make us understandable the concerns of the successful professional in the dual form of the sketched threats to cope with in ten years (loss of position, security, who knows what else), and in the not so bizarre concern about being worried.

At this first level of observation, the concern, which we correctly translate into fear, anxiety, concerning the condition of experiencing anxiety, is a legitimate question about its proper functioning: the root of fear of fear refers to our Nociceptive System, which elsewhere we have recognized as our alarm system, the fear of fear is an alarm signal that can warn about a systemic failure, in this case of the emotional system.

Of course the observations we are doing have value depending on the

"truthfulness" of the narration that the lady and the professional make Pag. 44 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

about what passes through their head: no one can guarantee that in their virtual environment things are exactly as they tell us.

No one can guarantee, not even the narrators themselves, that the narrative they have shared with us is the result of a decision, conscious or unaware, for example, of narrating what they also narrate in order not to narrate anything else, which may well be present in their virtual environment.

The lady may feel little loved, wishing to experience intense excitement, desire frustrated by a flat and colourless family menage and the "natural ageing" of the relationship with her husband; the professional could conceal (to himself first and then to us) recent events that, projected over the medium term, cast disturbing shadows on the current stability of its success.

But even within the limits of the reliability of the narratives, our observations remain valid, and help us to make our way towards a better understanding of the need of our interlocutors: for the one a help could come from supporting the search for something to devote (not excluding any option, not even the search for a new partner), for the other from exploring the limits of our ability to control configurations that could be present in the long term, for both help could come from a more sophisticated knowledge of our systemic nature.

Good systemic functioning is constantly under control, so to speak a

"sanitary" one, to the extent permitted by the sophisticated configuration of the Nociceptive System and by the production of feedback elements that are eminently related to the integration of our operating in the virtual environment and in the real environment: in both the considered "cases", what is in the real environment does not sufficiently coincide, it is not quite similar to the one with which each of them has to do in the respective virtual environment.

What has often been called the need for self-realization and placed at the last hierarchical level of the human needs, after all the more fundamental ones, must be re-read and relocated to the base, recognizing it equal if no greater power of so-called "primary needs": the Sameness Principle recognizes the unescapability of our systemic necessity of virtual and real collimating, compelling us to act in every way possible so that what for each one is in the virtual environment is also in the real environment.

In every sense, the help is intertwined with achieving and harmonizing virtual and real.

Pag. 46 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

Emotional Codes

We are on the same team, we all work for the same goal, I treat him as a team mate, and he shows off before the boss with the solutions and ideas that I share with him, putting me into the shade

The Emotional System has a hand in this, the codes of regulation of membership and rank contribute to the generation of the line of conduct of our triad of subjects, before any thought, indifferent to the identities of the people at stake.

Identities that the Emotional System is not given to recognize, it does not know what they are, it cannot know: they are very ancient codes, generated through countless generations to foster community life and coordinated action of several subjects, codes that we find in many other species, they are not our exclusive.

Even the Emotional System cannot fail to function, in its root the work of the Nociceptive System and of the Proficeptive System is incessant, every element generated by the sensorial system is finely processed and then integrated: and the Emotional System makes its honest labour, in face of every environments configurations it proposes its best ways to deal with.

It has some, and among these we collect the indications that relate to belonging (and not-belonging), recognition of rank and merit: our team Champion complains, is sad and angry, the colleague does not behave as his code indicates that he should do.

Do not overshadow the companions to show off before the boss, this violates membership and merit: being both vital conditions to be achieved, the displeasure associated with the violation of the emotional code peremptorily signals a threat to survival.

And again, the Emotional System indicates the way to deal with what threatens, attack-destruction or escape: in our developed social world, normally, there are very heavy limits both to attack and escape.

It seems there is no way out, impossible to deactivate the Emotional System, impossible to exclude the painful signal, impossible to attack or flee, we need to find a different solution: the most common is to endure the discomfort, paying the price of a relationship strongly exposed to

deteriorating, low levels of cooperation and collaboration, in short, say goodbye to the team.

And maybe putting in place neutralizing devices of the attack, in this case throwing a few sharp elbows to make themselves more visible for the boss, trying to give the colleague a taste of his own medicine.

Of course we find at least another emotional code, which supports the conduct of the "betrayer": It is the dependence code, antecedent on which the Helper is partly founded, and that, in this case, according to the narration of our champion of the teamwork , seems to have had more weight than the other codes.

As we noted earlier, when the Emotional System fails to solve a problem, the Operational Thought System can try to identify a different and more complex solution: our Champion could use a better knowledge of our systemic nature, in particular of our emotional codes, in order to be able to access an elaboration of the issue that reduces the destructive potential.

In order to be able to accept, for example, that the other, even in this case, as any living entity, is doing its best and can do nothing but do its best, considering also the possibilities to help him get what he needs, maybe getting that the other adopts a more favourable course of action.

The operation is certainly complex, also and especially for the connections, still not highlighted, with the operating of the Ego System: the "knowledge"

concerning the control of the interaction with our fellows is, more than the other, critical and delicate for our sophisticated Ego System, which we will soon be dealing with.

The Emotional System, which we share still today with the species that preceded us, has more or less 90 million years, a lot older than our Thought Systems: so it is not surprising that its functioning still dominate a large portion of the human behavior.

As with most of our systems, integrated with the Nociceptive and Proficeptive Systems, the execution of its codes accompanies the activation of the Proficeptive System (signal: We are happy), the blocking, the non-execution to the activation of the Nociceptive System: our Champion exhibits cues of sadness and rage, as well as verbal observations about his emotional state.

Pag. 48 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

For some time it has been noted that the complexity of our social life requires to endure ever increasing degrees of discomfort, discomfort related to the need to inhì bit what is commonly called instinctive behavior, and that now, with greater precision , we recognize as emotional codes: the simplest solution, for our Champion, is the physical elimination of the betrayer, a strongly unadvisable solution.

The discomfort risks to be improperly understood, we risk confusing the

"alarm" related to the output of an environment configuration potentially threatening (expulsion from the group, disfavour of the leader, devaluation of our merits) with the alarm related to the non-execution of the action indicated by the emotional code.

Thus risking to discard alternative viable solutions, in the examined case for the recovery of collaboration and transparency maybe obtainable with more "sophisticated" behaviors, because constantly subjected to the scourge of the discomfort related to the inhì bition of the course of action indicated by the emotional code, relentlessly reported by the Nociceptive System.

A better knowledge of our systemic nature helps to identify more appropriate ways of managing the alarms of all our systems, accepting the pain, sometimes even intense, that is only the substance of the alarms, while we elaborate more effective courses of action to obtain favourable configurations of environments.

Elaboration that mostly takes time, is not immediate, the solutions are not immediate, as the emotional system peremptorily requieres, the discomfort can not disappear immediately: during this technical lead time , the discomfort, now understood in its nature, must be borne, and attenuated as far as possible.

While still accepting that even after we have found acceptable and realistic solutions, the Emotional System returns to be felt. .

Ego

And me, then?

Yes, we cannot neglect the Ego System, however difficult it may be to deal with it.

Just glancing into our homes, even superficially considering the people we care most, as we carry out only one our "normal" days, what emerges is a quantity and variety of dizzing needs and actions, it would take weeks to describe them adequately, volumes to start putting them black on white.

In each of them we find a bit of the Ego System, corresponding to the code, the plexus-sequence of neurograms activated to deal with every single detail: like all systems, even the Ego System must function and find evidence of its own good operating.

"Yes, but. ."

In the common interaction with our fellows, the frequency of the yes-but is normally very high, even and often when there are no substantial elements of opposition: what we are dealing with is handled in a different way from that which the yes-butter preferentially adopts.

Again we find the Sameness Principle in play, what is in the real environment is not enough similar to what is in the virtual environment, a condition not conducive to our survival, we need to do something to get a better collimation.

The first operation that we generally see is to oppose (yes, but. .) accompanied by presenting, repeating, reiterating, resubmitting what is appropriate: it is a narrative act, of which we already know the benefits for the narrator.

The Ego System, in favour of the organism's survival, must obtain continuous evidence of its proper functioning, including evidence of the effectiveness of the codes it consists of: much more and far more important than what we are accustomed to think of the want-to-be-right, more or less at any cost.

The effective Narrator must be helpful, of course, especially when it comes to developing learning, which implies a modification of the codes.

"We're friends, but if I don't call, silence reigns. ."

Pag. 50 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

Our Ego System, in order to be effective and efficient, works by plexus of neurograms, it is as a harlequin, like a theatre company: the "characters" of which it is constituted (plexus of neurograms), which come into play for controlling the interaction with the environments, sometimes coincide with subjects existing in the real environment.

Loved ones, friends, who is closer to us, in other words, are literally "parts"

of the Ego System: their presence and their absence in our real environment relates to the integrity of the Ego System, when they are not physically present, when we can not be sure of their real existence, of their well-being, we feel pain, the Nociceptive System signals threatening configuration.

Up to the most extreme experience, where pain is intense and prolonged, and much time is needed for it to be attenuate: physically we lose an important part of us, just as if it were a part of our body, because it is.

"Out of sight, out of mind. ."

At the bottom, those we do not know, or know little, and we do not see, can do what they want, as long as there are no damages or threats to us: those with whom we live no, they can not.

Those with whom we live must do as we say, and in that case we are happy: it is still the work of our Ego System, when things are not so our pain reveals a dual source, as for the Emotional System.

On the one hand, if anyone close to us does not do as we say there may be the risk that this will produce environment configurations unfavorable to us, and the nociceptive system signals it; on the other hand we are confronted with the proof that our codes are not effective, and that, even, parts of our Ego System do not work properly.

Only a long training to temporarily endure the frustration of our desires allows us to switch from "normal" giving instructions to ask "How would you do", allows us to accept and try to deal with the diversity of our fellows, their codes, with their autopoietic nature.

"She is a tough character. ."

Flangar sed not flectar, I break but don’t bend, these traits seem to be socially appreciated. . at least in words.

Community life, working together with others shows irrefutable evidence of the enormous difficulties and obstacles generated by the so-called strong characters: cooperation and collaboration require flexibility and openness, however, in each of us, the desire that all do as we say, without arguing and without opposition, is insuppressible.

Now we know that this desire is a face of the medal of the need to find proof of our good functioning: the appreciation reserved to the "tough character", despite the obvious difficulties and obstacles it generates, reflects our not so much secret desire to be able to do as we like, and that others do as we like.

Whether it is an unachievable desire, in the real environment, this is as obvious as it is irrelevant, for our systemic configuration needs: our systemic need remains at the foot of this singular and contradictory appreciation, remains at the foot of impressive collective phenomena, from the so-called charismatic leadership to dictatorship, from social networks to the large part of the production and enjoyment of collective entertainment forms.

***

We put the Narrator in a difficult position: on the one hand must be a Helper, offering and providing help with respect to the needs its interlocutor has to do with, on the other we have just said that the systemic need is at the foot of charismatic leadership, dictatorship, social network and more.

Let's remove the effective Narrator from this embarrassing situation: charismatic leadership, dictatorship, social networks are illusory and ineffective solutions, from the point of view of the effective control of the interaction with the real environment, effective narrator is who succeeds in offering and providing help and support to improve the control of the interaction with both environments, real and virtual.

The cash and public success, the social consensus are not enough to allow us to distinguish effective solutions and ineffective solutions, we need to go deeper and more in detail in examining the actual control of interaction with the environments, real and virtual.

Pag. 52 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

Bisogna pensare

. . I prepared my favorite coffee, hot and fragrant, and then I started pouring it into the sugar pot..

A very serious study about the human error categorizes the errors in three types: slip, laps, mistake 6, and in great detail presents examples, patterns of intervention and interesting observations.

Like almost all studies on human behavior, also this one carefully describes behaviors (in this case human errors), when and where they are more or less likely to be produced, but does not provide an explanation, does not indicate a source, a possible source: with the obvious consequence of making doubtful solutions and remedies.

Although we do not intend to fill gaps of this magnitude, we are able, however, to open at least a glimpse of comprehension not only of the coffee poured into the sugar pot, but of a myriad of other human events, otherwise mysterious and inexplicable, helping our Narrator to orient and recognize the needs of its counterpart, in order to generate an effective narration.

Now we know that our systems are constantly at work, and we know that we live, in a way, a double life, in parallel, in the real environment and in the virtual environment; we have accepted that the good functioning of our systems is an obvious condition of success for our survival, and that our systems find confirmation of their good functioning mainly "working", with this generating the essential proofs of its proper functioning.

Even in the simple operation of preparing coffee all our systems are at work, while we prepare coffee in the real environment we live our parallel life in the virtual environment. . and nothing guarantees that what we're dealing with in the virtual environment necessarily and exactly coincides with what we're dealing with in the real environment.

We can even say that it is probably impossible that what we live in the real environment coincides exactly with what happens in the virtual environment: to be able to govern the physical action in the real environment it seems necessary that, however small, our systems work in 6 James Reason, Human Error, Cambridge University Press, Manchester 1990

a virtual environment that presents a slight difference of time, in which we anticipate the future to guide the present.

Even if it were a scrap of only a few hundredths, tenths of a second, for the execution of the simplest tasks of which we are particularly skilled, however this gap of “technical” time is enough to denote a small difference between our two lives.

Difference that each of us knows, for direct and referable experience, can be much, much greater: as we walk we mind our own business, while we drive the car (a relatively complex activity), we talk with our traveling companion, while we reorder the work table we put the pieces together of the conversation we had with a colleague. . multiplied lives.

And so the mistake? On the one hand we can see it as proof of "malfunction"

of one or more of our systems, or rather, a temporary flaw in the integration of the operation of some of our systems: the operations we were performing in our virtual environment, parallel and different from the guidance of the execution of the necessary and sufficient actions to prepare a good coffee, have negatively interfered with the accuracy of the operations in the real environment.

The result is a defective product compared to expectations: the coffee has not been adequately prepared to be "normally" tasted.

The "normally" quotation marks anticipate another possible understanding of the error, diametrically opposite: we are not dealing with a malfunction, with a systemic integration flaw, but with the result of a systemic composition that has privileged the course of an action completely in tune with the pursuit of satisfaction of a desire.

This perspective was cultivated mainly by Sigmund Freud, still today can be pleasant the reading of Psychopathology of Daily Life, published in 1916, a collection of descriptions and interpretations of slips and laps, very different interpretations from those proposed by James Reason.

The President opens the work of the Assembly saying: "We declare concluded the work of the Assembly concluded", realizing the error only after pronouncing the sentence. . He himself later acknowledged that he was completely opposed to the Assembly itself and the work that should have been carried out.

Pag. 54 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

If the lapsus linguae (slip, for James Reason) does not get the result of preventing something unpleasant from happening, however it satisfies, for example, the desire to protest and oppose (elements of the Ego System); pouring coffee into sugar could satisfy the desire to taste sweeter flavors, perhaps to counterbalance, proverbially, some recent bitterness. . amare le donne, dolce il caffè7.

Which of the two perspectives should we adopt? Our effective Narrator is forced to adopt the second, , in order to be effective, to wonder about the possible root that makes sense of what can seem a “simple” error. . and then see how to deal with it, how to help the interlocutor to compose needs, desires and actions.

Our systems of thought, operational and symbolic, like all the systems we are made of, cannot stop working, not even when we sleep, even if there is sufficient evidence of a change in the modes of operating that we can account: although copious investigations in the field of neuroscience do not yet provide complete and convincing answers, it will take time and considerable improvements in the investigative tools.

But even with what we have, however little, we can accept the fragments of dream that we can remember as a sufficient clue to prove the unstoppable work of our systems: there’s a pretty big leap from here to be able to say, to

"treat" and use the stories told by our dreams (of course it is narration, what else?), with all due respect for the interesting and appreciable indications of the famous Freudian Traumdeutung.

We can accept that among the needs to be fulfilled there is to take care of something, keeping in good working conditions our Operational Thought System and our Symbolic Thought System, ready to recognize tensions and difficulties related to under-utilisation or over-utilisation of our systems: if idle hands are not necessarily the devil’s workshop, however, we need to adequately feed our systemic machine and keep it at work.

***

7 Untraslatable pun, the Italian word “Amare” can mean To Love or Bitter: love/bitter woman, sweet coffee.

Let us conclude for now this first part of work of reconstruction of substance and sense of narration: what we have seen so far interwines any experience of narration, in any area of our life.

We started looking for something that could improve our professional as well as our everyday life, and it is time to deal more in detail with some specific aspects of human interaction.

Pag. 56 – Systemics and Narration – © Ugo Bonora 2019

Table of Contents

The Useful Narration ...............................................................................

A bit of phylogeny .................................................................................

Real Environment and Virtual Environment ...........................................................

Substance of Narration .............................................................................

Before the Subject .................................................................................

The Narrating-I ....................................................................................

The Other ..........................................................................................

Emotions ...........................................................................................

Listening ..........................................................................................

Effective Narration ................................................................................

Operating ..........................................................................................

Emotional Codes ....................................................................................

Ego ................................................................................................

Bisogna pensare ....................................................................................