A few days ago I greeted systems engineers, industry people, and academics at the Cornell Systems Summit in Ithaca, New York with “Aloha mai kākou.” I didnʻt do so lightly. Even after 50 years in Hawaii, my understanding of aloha grows.
I explained to the crowd that aloha is more than hello and goodbye. More than a mere greeting. Alo is the face. Ha is the breath. The sharing of the breath.
But then I explained more. A couple of weeks ago, I was blessed to take a Hawaiian cultural workshop given by Kahu (Hawaiian cultural practitioner) Greg DelaCruz who demonstrated how Hawaiian words contain deeper meanings. Alo is the presence (my word). Ha is the life force, the movement in and through the water, the sky, the earth, and all living things. He showed through example and simple practices, how to increase this energy flow between and among all of us.
As Kahu Greg expressed all of existence in fluent Hawaiian and then translated, I was putting his teachings into the language of systems science. When we share this life force, this powerful exchange of information, energy, and information results in bonds, which are also the links in the networks of family and community that distribute the information, material, and energy that ensure our existence.
Aloha is also love. Love is the exchange of information, energy, and material that create and sustain bonds. Love is also the good feeling, Natureʻs evolutionary reward, the feedback, that inspires us to keep going, to keep bonding, to open to it, to give and receive.
In other words, love can be explained in terms of bonds, links, networks, distribution, flows, boundary conditions, and feedback.
But at the same time, the explosion of complexity that is the outcome of every simple action can not be explained, modeled, or measured.
The Western industrial world teaches division. The metaphor is the machine. Break things down into parts to understand and fix them. Things are divided. The concrete vs. the abstract, the subjective vs. objective. Mind vs. body vs. spirit. Natural vs human. Political, economic, and religious. Experts break it down into even smaller bits.
The forest is lost in the trees.
The postmodern world rebels. What is observed depends upon the observer. We each live in our separate realities, and cultures create their own realities. Beware of the words of the powerful. Which is correct.
But there is another worldview, one taught by the great prophets and understood in indigenous teachings. There are universals. Truths beyond us. Truths that better explain existence and our experiences.
There are patterns of interactivity among things. You can call these “systems processes.” All that we experience, including experience itself, are manifestations of these systems processes. Understand how they work, and then how they work together, and you will better understand and be able to organize yourself and the systems in which you live.
At the same time, life is unimaginably complex and every action has unknowable effects. As our island of knowledge grows, the coastlines, the boundaries, to what is not known also grow.
This is the realm of systems science. A science that makes sense in Hawaii. The science of aloha.
Mahalo to Kahu and Pastor Greg DelaCruz and his MAKA workshop on Hawaiian culture for inspiring this post.