Kitobni o'qish: «Applied Love»

01 Problems

Writer: It was a warm, dry Moscow evening. We walked to the Hermitage Garden Park with my wife and her friend. I looked around so that by the time we got there they would not be hit by cars at traffic lights. They talked with enthusiasm about life. We haven't seen each other for a long time, the news has accumulated. I walked alongside and listened with the edge of my ear. “Problems” … Problems here, problems there, and with this and this, there are many problems. Oh, these women's conversations! What if it's really a problem ?! I felt uncomfortable. And it seems that, personally, everything is in order for me, but when you love someone, and that someone has problems, as if you have them. I decided to help somehow and carefully wedged myself into the conversation:

– Girls. Do you know how problems differ from tasks?

– How?

– Now, if you need to do something, but it is not clear how much time, money, or personal energy it will take, then this is a problem. But if you know about the time frame, and you will not need fantastic money, and you seem to be able to do it, then this is a task! Even if you need a lot of money, or time – a year or a few, it is still a big task, but a task. If we figure it out in this way – what do you have more: problems or tasks?

– Mmm… If you look like that, then there are no problems at all. There are many tasks…

We just came to the entrance to the park. My heart was relieved and it even seemed that the evening had become brighter. We could already hear the sounds of jazz from the stage, so we went straight to it and completely surrendered ourselves to music and relaxation…

Consultant: After all, a writer is a writer! How beautifully you know how to tell! Meanwhile, after you told me this story for the first time, I immediately used it in my book "Management for Dummies". You are a writer, but I write and publish books! Funny, isn't it?! :)

Engineer: FIRE!

Writer: Oh my God! What's on fire?

Consultant: Don't panic! We all get up together and calmly walk to the exit. We do not use the elevator, we go down the stairs.

Engineer: Stop, stop, stop. You don't have to go anywhere, I was joking.

Consultant: Joking?!

Engineer: More precisely, I conducted an experiment. To test a hypothesis. Look, I said just one word – "fire", and each of you started programs in the nervous system. The writer got excited instantly, and you have a program of action. And not surprisingly, you said that the security department conducts regular training fire alarms in your company there. So it turns out – one word, and immediately the release of hormones, increased heart rate, activation of certain nervous complexes. While you are calming down, I will finish the thought. It turns out that the Writer is absolutely right. You use the word “task” instead of the word “problem” and a completely different internal state, less anxiety, psychic energy is not spent on experiencing. Of course, without self-hypnosis – "I am the most charming and attractive", just a blow with facts and logic on problems! I draw on the board …

Consultant: I propose not to be satisfied with what has already been achieved and to deal one more blow to the problems. Here you drew an arrow to the problems when there is uncertainty. But we try to avoid problems – the so-called negative valence in Kurt Lewin's field theory. And if you imagine something for which there is no time, effort and money, but what we strive for, what we want to achieve or get. What's the best word?

Writer: Dream!

Consultant: Dream – great! Here comes the second blow to the problems!

Consultant: I remembered the third blow to the problems – anecdote …: A Jew comes to a rabbi:

– Rebbe, there are so many problems in life, so many problems! What to do?

– Don't worry, God gives a person as many trials as he can endure. Therefore, either you will cope with your problems, or these are not your problems! :)

Writer: It seems to me that we have groped for a good deed. By simply asking himself the right questions, a person can get rid of most of the problems in their head by transforming them into tasks or dreams!

Engineer: But you can even translate a dream into a task …

Consultant: Wait, wait. Don't touch the dream with your engineering hands! :)

But seriously, it is very sad to see how people thoughtlessly use words, and do not use the richness of the language. From generation to generation, the most frequently used words, which most fully reflect the essence of things, have been fixed in the language. Words, in turn, are connected at a deep level with neurophysiological programs, as you rightly noted: fire – we run, problem – we are worried, task – we do not worry and we solve the task, dream – we are dreaming :)

Writer: Writing was brought to Russia by the Slavic educators Cyril and Methodius, they created the alphabet and began translating from the Greek language, first of the biblical, and then of other texts. It's not just one word for another to change – it was necessary to convey the meanings! And this matter is more complicated than – "mirror" as "solid water" – for the natives to translate. It was necessary to put all the huge worldview and cultural layers of the Greek civilization accumulated at that time into Cyrillic texts for our ancestors. Just imagine the thought process of two holy people in the IX century, burying the gold of the Bible and ancient philosophers in the land of the Russian language between turnip and buckwheat under a torch burying the gold of the Bible. We still have to dig up and dig up. And we not only do not think about the roots and meanings of words. On the contrary, we use them so carelessly that a real devaluation occurs, and entire universes of meanings are cut off from human experience. Take the same “love”. Ask who on the street – what is “love”? What thoughts will move in your head? Hearts on postcards, sexual love, love for the homeland? Are there many meanings behind this? Eh, problem …

Consultant: Well, don't worry so much. Let's get back to the positive from where we started. There is a good approach for careful word handling that actually works. Many management techniques are ways to translate problems into tasks with the subsequent achievement of a result.

Engineer: Techniques, methods, methodologies … Just don't be offended. Personally, I believe in science. And now, as my wife says, “every gopher is an agronomist”. And everyone has their own ingenious idea, their own method.

Consultant: You are right, science is broader. But the distinguishing characteristic of any method is that it works, it actually works. Although, it is possible in a limited area. I have thoughts on this, but come on next time? I already got tired somehow.

Writer: Let's start with this. See you again, my friends!

02 Methods

Consultant: Well, well, I promised to tell you about the methods. Organizational development, which I am engaged in, is difficult to call an established science. Rather, it is a collection of theories and methods. At the same time, largely thanks to our conversations with you, it is no longer enough for me to simply apply working methods, knowledge and skills. I dug deeper. Now I'll tell you with a simple example… Who and when was the last one on a fishing trip?

Engineer: Oh … I haven't been for a thousand years. Work-home-work. I began to catch myself thinking that I was waiting for my retirement so I could start fishing again. As you and I were then at the end of school – the beginning of the university.

Writer: I'm afraid NOT to be mistaken if I say that the last time I went fishing was with you… twenty years ago. Have you decided to upset us?

Consultant: Not at all. Just a good example. Imagine: a person is hungry and wants to eat fish. What will an ordinary kind person offer? That's right – fish. What will the consultant-methodologist do? That's right, the methodologist will say – "I'd rather give you a fishing rod and teach you how to fish"! :) And then he will start to learn: first – there is no fish in the toilet! And in winter it is pointless to drill holes on the ice rink too. We need a river or lake. We take a fishing rod with a fishing line, a float, a sinker, a hook and go to the shore. We string a worm on a hook, throw it into the lake and wait. If the float moves, the fish bites. When the float has sunk – hook it! Pull the rod and haul out the fish – voila!

Engineer: Well, you somehow very primitively told. There are many subtle points.

Consultant: But just at the subtle points, differences in methodologies begin in an amount equal to the number of methodologists! :) What time do you need to start catching, where is it better to dig for worms, what kind of bait to throw into the water to lure the fish, and so on.

Writer: You also need to spit on the worm before throwing it into the water…

Consultant: Shh… !!! :) These are secret techniques, they are revealed only to the “elite” during additional personal trainings!

Engineer: For an extra fee?

Consultant: For an extra fee. :) But this is not the main thing. A person remains on the surface, without looking, so to speak, into the depths. Nothing is told or understood about how life is organized under water.

Writer: Does a person need this? After all, if the method works, if the bucket is full of fish, why know how everything is organized there under water?

Consultant: Exactly! I wanted to tell you about this. People learn a working technique and stop there. If there are more conventional “fish” than a neighbor's – it means that the technique is better, or it has been mastered better. You can calm down…

But suddenly, the situation changes. Instead of a calm lake, there is a turbulent river. The old approach doesn't work. We need a new method and a new methodologist. It may happen that there is no suitable method – there is no one to ask or the situation is unique, no one has ever encountered such a thing. What to do? Starving to death? Trying to go through all sorts of options with the hope that something will accidentally work and a new method will be found? Isn't it more effective to understand what is really going on under water? Then the techniques themselves will be baked like hot cakes. If the general principles are clear, the particular option is always obvious. I hope it’s clear that I’m not talking about fishing for a long time, but about any methods.

Engineer: It seems to me that you demand too much from an ordinary person. A common man needs a method when he can take money, go to the store and buy fish. If the store is closed – there is a 24-hour supermarket nearby.

Consultant: Well, of course I'm not talking about an ordinary person. You yourself asked about science and methods. Science looks at the root, understands the foundations. And the method is how knowledge is applied in a specific situation. Although, you know, sometimes, in general terms, for any person to be successful in his field of activity, it is necessary to “look under the water”. In my training sessions, I often start with this slide:

The first level of maturity of understanding is "HOW?"

"The little son came to his father and asked: what is good and what is bad?" At this level, they usually say, “Do it! Don't do that! ” Without much explanation. Our managers sin with this. They give orders and wait not for questions, but for exact execution. Subordinates in this case gradually degrade, turning off their own brain. Or they connect it only in order to think of not rushing to carry out the order, because it can be canceled or another, more important task will come down.

The second level of maturity is "WHAT?"

I remember that it was a real discovery for me in management training. Before that, I felt like a very cool specialist, who knew "HOW" in the first specialty. And then it turned out that the world is more complicated, and if you did the right thing that nobody needs, then I'm sorry … “HOW” was not enough to be effective. It was necessary to understand “WHAT” to do in the current situation, which can, of course, change.

The third level of maturity is “WHY? WHAT FOR?"

If knowing "HOW" is practical, knowing "WHAT" gives tactical advantages, then the answer to the question "WHY?" – strategic! This is about maturity, about long planning horizons. For large companies doing business for a long term, this is the main question – "WHY?" Because you can win all the battles, but lose the war. Simon Sinek talks and writes a lot about this in his books. One of them seems to be called – “Start with WHY”

Engineer: I also noticed how people seemed to make completely different choices in the same situations. Some thought in the category “I need it now, and then at least the grass won't grow!”, while others took into account the consequences that may come in the future in a few years.

Writer: Agree, in this light, the behavior of a true believer may seem less naive, who answers the questions “why” at a particular moment, having eternal life as the planning horizon…

Consultant: Well … three levels: "HOW", "WHAT" and "WHY". But I have defined one more – the highest level of maturity, the fourth – ONTOLOGY. This is a search for answers to the question – how everything is organized. For example, we do not ask ourselves a question – why not take a step from the roof of a 15-storey building? As if everything is clear: if you take a step, you will fly down and crash to death. This is how the physical world is organized. Therefore, I am sure that once you understand the ontology, you can very easily answer all the previous questions – WHY? WHAT? HOW? This means that it can help anyone in any area. Although in scale it already looks like science. And if the answers are given only on the first three levels, on the first two, or, in general – only to the question "HOW?" – this is definitely a methodology!

Writer: “Methodology” – from Greek – the teaching of methods. As I understand it from our conversation today: science is more powerful than methodologies, which can be many different on one topic. And you, by the way, do not bother that there are also a lot of sciences? A whole Academy of Sciences was established :)

Engineer: It's getting late, can we continue next time?

Consultant: I have an answer to your question! But, in order not to interfere in a heap, I agree – let's go next time.

Engineer: Fine!

Writer: Well, good. See you again, my friends!

03 Philosophy

Consultant: I definitely enjoy our philosophical conversations with you. At first, I confess, the Writer seemed too emotional to me. You, Engineer, were too rational. And the only common thing that united us then, as it seemed to me, was that together we graduated from one "applied mathematics" at the university, there are common themes and a common language. But then our life paths diverged, and when we began to communicate again, I asked myself – "why be together again if we have become so different?" Is nostalgia for adolescence a sufficient condition for friendship?

Writer: Heartless bastard!

Engineer: I agree.

Consultant: Wait a minute, let me finish! Engineer, do you remember how we argued about communism and capitalism? I had just finished my second managerial education and was trying to explain to you that “it's easier to break than to build”. That it is possible, probably, to return the plundered factories, but then they also need to be competently managed and developed. It is wrong to make a revolution, demolish the existing organization and say that you have done your half of the work and someone else has to continue somehow.

Engineer: I didn't say that. On the contrary, we then invited you to a meeting of our cell, so that you made a presentation about management to us.

Consultant: It was during the preparation of the presentation that I understood the main idea, which now I find more and more confirmation – we do not hold the whole one at a time! We, like those sages, hold some trunk, some tail, some something else. The elephant appears only when we get together and start communicating. Remember this picture?

Engineer: Sure. Square, triangle and circle are projections of a three-dimensional object onto orthogonal planes. If we position ourselves so that everyone can clearly see only one side, then everyone will see his own figure, different from the rest.

Consultant: Everyone will have their own truth. And until we get together and discuss something in common, but from different points of view, we have no chance to understand what we are really dealing with. One lives in the world of triangles, the other in the world of squares, and so on.

Writer: In the world of shadows. And if there is no source of light, then – generally in darkness.

Consultant: The most striking thing is that as soon as you have gathered an understanding of the subject from the three shadows, you can now change the lighting at any angle – you will still recognize this particular object in any shadow.

Writer: It's like a teacher who knows his topic well.. He can answer the question not with a quote from a textbook, but the way the answer is refracted in a specific situation, taking into account how old the student is in front of him and what are his abilities to perceive information.

Engineer: By the way, about perception. But an object, not a scientific object, but the one that is drawn on the board – after all, it can smell, make sounds, taste different, have different temperatures from different sides. Imagine how our brain, simultaneously collecting information from different receptors, collects a holistic multidimensional object and keeps it in focus and dynamics of change.

Writer: It seems to me that the person himself for another person is the most complex object, which is somehow collected in pieces in the head and then lives there. And every time you interact with this person, the projections of the whole are rechecked, something is added or removed, the model of this person is refined in the head.

Consultant: This is despite the fact that, as the Engineer says, we do not see the person directly. There are photons flying to the retina of the eye, there are sound waves, there are molecules of smell, the warmth of touch, and all this is combined with the image of this person in memory, which is refined with each new portion of information. Returning to our previous conversation: there is a person somewhere in the external environment, and in our head we see him only as a float on the surface of our consciousness… People, like fish in the ocean of life, touch our sensory hooks, fishing lines are pulled, and we sit on the shore of our consciousness and talk with floats :(

Writer: Have you ever wondered what “consciousness” is? Tell me, how many fingers do you see?

Engineer: Two.

Consultant: I do confirm, two. But what's the catch? It is the usual test for the presence of consciousness. When a person falls unconscious, after he is brought to his senses, he is asked about the number of fingers to make sure that it is adequate.

Writer: It turns out that you know that there are two of them. And you know. And I know. And we have “co-knowledge” or “co-science”! Latin roots confirm the same meaning: consciousness – shared knowledge. An interesting lesson is to take a close look at English words starting with “co-” and “con-”.

Engineer: It turns out that consciousness is somehow connected with language? We are with you in the Russian mind, the British in the English mind, the Chinese in the Chinese. And when we learn other languages, do we expand our consciousness?

Consultant: Square, triangle, circle…

Engineer: I disagree. “A chair” is “a chair” everywhere despite the wording of the language.

Writer: And what about different associations and connotations?

Engineer: It turns out that there is a certain capacity of the language, and it depends not only on the number of words, but also on the number of connections between them. Just like with human neurons! According to the latest data that I heard, there are about eighty billion of them, and there are more neural connections that these neurons form among themselves than there are stars in the sky! Some incredible numbers.

Consultant: I heard that a child, when he is born, has many more neurons than an adult. During growing up, those neurons that were not activated and did not begin to participate in neural connections die off. How a sculptor gradually removes everything superfluous from a single piece of marble and the figure remains.

Writer: The main question is – what is superfluous in our brain? Returning to the language. From the age of one, my wife and I taught our son three languages at once – English, French and Russian, of course. Courses for toddlers, tutors. The first words he began to speak in English. Apparently, because the words are shorter – "cat", "dog"… The idea to develop a child through learning different languages from childhood belonged to my wife, and at first I looked closely, but then I realized that there was no overload, languages were learned playfully – and I calmed down. It is interesting that during a conversation, the son freely switches from one language to another, never mixes them up. If I see an object, for example, an apple, then the Russian word “apple” appears in my head, which I can “translate” in the same head into “apple” in English. Just the way we learned languages – translation. And the son saw an apple for the first time, when he did not know any name, he just saw a tasty object. Heard three different names and remembered. That is, in my head “object – word 1 – then word 2”, and in his brain all connections are immediately ignited “object – word 1”, “object – word 2”, “object – word 3”.

Consultant: This is how our sciences are divided. Biologists have one language, chemists have a second, physicists have a third, but an apple is one object!

Engineer: Again – a square, a triangle, a circle…

Consultant: Yes, the world is complex and diverse. First there was philosophy, which posed general, existential questions. As knowledge accumulated, differentiation began, splitting into various sciences, in each of which related knowledge accumulated, its own language appeared. So much so that scientists have ceased to understand each other. But, by the way, there is a demand for the integration of sciences under one roof. All innovation is the result that appears at the junction of the integration of what was previously separated. To go far – as a consultant, I very often organize an environment in which employees from different departments finally begin to understand each other, although they seem to have spoken the same language before. And from this new understanding, there are explosions of efficiency.

Engineer: Now it is clear why our Doctor of Science is called “PhD” – Doctor of Philosophy. Ph.D. in mathematics, Ph.D. in physics, and so on. I just now realized.

Consultant: Apparently yes. How different methods relate to the same science. Similarly, different sciences belong to the same philosophy. And if a separate science answers the question – "How is the world organized in the plane of certain knowledge", then philosophy tries to answer one main question – "How is the World actually organized?"

Writer: Philo-sophy – from Greek – is the love of wisdom. But, if we are talking about a real questioning about the organization of the world, then religion appeared earlier. Appeared and developed. From answers to the questions “why the thunder is thundering” and “why the wind blows”, to the monotheistic religions of our time. At the same time, I consider it a profound delusion when they immediately slide down to the question “Who organized the World?” And argue whether “He” exists. From this all the problems. Religion answers precisely the question "How the World is organized" and "What is the place of human beings in the World?" The very word “religion” – “re-ligare” from Greek – reconnection, reconnection of what is already connected. Take two points in space. How many lines pass through them? One. The only one. And when we draw this line, or describe it by laws in science, there is a connection in our minds of two points, which are already connected, without you and me. In this sense, the concrete philosophy, which describes the World better than anyone else, approaches the concept of "religion".

Engineer: Personally, I can draw many lines through two points.

Writer: But only one of them will be a straight line, a trajectory along which the light travels!

Consultant: I'd rather stay on the philosophy floor. It is no longer as crowded as on the floors of methodology and science. In addition, the higher you are, as they say in our management, the less pressure on you from above! :) But I won't climb to the floor of religions. I'm afraid that at this altitude I may not have enough oxygen. In fact, historically, different peoples approached the ultimate foundations in different ways, so it turns out that there is nothing new – the same square, triangle, circle. You, the Writer, even though you say temptingly, that everything is simple and clear there, and the light in one straight line passes through two points. Well, do you at least admit that the light can be of different colors?

Writer: My light definitely shines and warms me, I will not tell about others and I will not impose. Each lamb will be hung by its own tail. See you again, my friends!

04 Knowledge and Faith

Writer: Who wrote this?

Engineer: I wrote this. This is the definition. You yourself said that no one understands what “love” is, and cannot express it in words if they ask what it is. I thought for a long time, found some elements, but finally the puzzle came together after reading the book you gave me.

Consultant: Bravo! The best writers and philosophers of all times pounded their foreheads in an attempt to express what “love” is, and our Engineer thought and thought and gave a definition! By the way, what book did the Writer give you?

Engineer: The Holy Bible. The Old Testament and the New Testament.

Consultant: ?!

Writer: What Gospel have you read in the New Testament? From Matthew, from Mark, from Luke, or from John. There, of course, all the books have the same story of Christ, but the first three were written independently for different communities: Matthew wrote for the Jews who believed in Christ, Mark wrote his Gospel for the Gentiles who believed in Christ, Luke has many historical details about the childhood of Jesus and his mother, Mary. And John wrote, knowing about the books already written, and his predecessors' stories are more supplemented than repeated.

Engineer: I read everything. Old and New Testaments – from Genesis to the Apocalypse. I can’t read books differently. I always read it completely first in order to understand the boundaries: what is at stake and what is not in the book. And then I go back to the moments that were hooked.

Writer: There are fifty books in the Old Testament, if you count non-canonical ones! I can't even believe that you have mastered everything.

Engineer: It was difficult, I will not hide it. But it was precisely while gnawing through the stories of the Old Testament with me that an insight happened, as our Consultant says. Just don’t be offended, it’s you who go to Church, and I am a man of science, I love facts and cause-and-effect relationships. Let me tell you in order how I saw it.

Consultant: It's getting more and more interesting!

Writer: Calm down, let him tell us what he understood…

Engineer: Let's start with the fact that laws are not invented, but discovered. The real laws, I mean, are related to the organization of the universe. Apples fell to the ground before Newton discovered the law of universal gravitation, and will continue to fall. In any case, first some pattern is caught, a hypothesis is made, the collection of facts begins, the identification of cause-and-effect relationships, the hypothesis is corrected. And only then, when the facts obtained by scientific methods are not refuted by experiments, a law is postulated. And even in this case, the field of application can expand, and new experiments will lead to a new law, in relation to which the old law will be a special case, working on a partial subdomain – one of the projections of a more multifaceted reality.

Consultant: Square, triangle, circle.

Writer: Don't interrupt! Please continue.

Engineer: It must be admitted that there are incidents in science. For example, the laws open to the microcosm do not work for the macrocosm and vice versa. String theory tries to combine the quantum mechanics of the microcosm and the general theory of relativity of the macrocosm, but we are already talking about at least ten dimensions of space-time.

So back to the laws and the Bible. In the Old Testament there are ten commandments, read – laws. There are only two in the New Testament, but they replace the previous ten. What are these laws about? About social behavior. What to do and what not to do. At first I thought, "Isn't Moses taking on a lot?" – where did he get these ten laws, why exactly these. And so, reading one of the countless stories about who gave birth to whom, who went where, who exterminated whom, it dawned on me: “Jews are a unique people!” It is not known why, but from the very ancient times they began to write down everything that happened to their people. Methodically, meticulously, in detail. For many hundreds of years, they have been fixing the facts of the life of the Jewish people with perseverance, which would be the envy of laboratory assistants and sociologists. And it turns out, having such records, one could see social patterns unfolding over the centuries, which is absolutely impossible for one person to do, observing the facts only during his life, even having the stories of his parents, who, as a rule, are also rejected in the heat of youthful immense energy.

Writer: This is how animals live. Instincts, copying of parents and own experience. It is confirmed that not only labor made a man out of a monkey, but also writing.

Consultant: The son of Abraham was Isaac… :)

Engineer: You're laughing in vain. When you have fourteen genera from Abraham to David, then fourteen genera from David to the migration to Babylon, and fourteen more genera from the migration to Babylon to Christ, and all the stories of each are described in detail, then you have such an array of data, such a Big Data that it is a matter of technology to bring out working social laws. I'll get better – social laws that work on the size of the population and on time intervals calculated in centuries. Although there may be exceptions when someone, for example, stole something and was never caught.

Writer: It's a matter of planning horizon.

Consultant: Wait, wait. So we can agree to the point that there is no Faith, but only there is knowledge and not yet open laws. The more I learn, the more the borderline with what I don't know. And if God is located in the area of faith, then by increasing knowledge, a person cognizes God.

Writer: “Because in much wisdom is much grief, and increase of knowledge is increase of sorrow.” Ecclesiastes.

Engineer: Let me disagree with what is on the board. I would divide everything into known and unknown. We will refer knowledge and faith to the known and distinguish two sub-areas in each area: with a plus sign and with a minus sign, like this:

Now, any fact that a person operates with can be attributed to one of these five areas.

If it is known that something exists and it is proven, it is “knowledge-plus”;

If it is known that something does not exist and it is proven, this is “knowledge-minus”;

If something is known to exist, but there is no evidence, it is “faith-plus”;

If it is known that something does not exist, but there is no evidence, it is “faith-minus”;

If it is not known whether something exists or not, it is “unknown”.

And we are talking about knowledge, not about consciousness, that is, about each person separately. The same fact for different people may be located in different areas in their reality map. At the same time, a person acts, not proceeding from “I believe – I do not believe”, but more often from “exists – does not exist”, that is, both knowledge and faith are taken into account.

Consultant: It turns out that if I assert that there is no God, but I cannot prove it, then for me this is “faith-minus”?

Writer: I told you that this is an empty and harmful conversation. It makes no sense to argue about “who” made the World. It makes sense to discuss “how” the World is organized.

Engineer: I agree. Let's do an experiment. Consultant, take this apple, lift it up on your outstretched hand. As I say – let it go!

Consultant: Come on. That's it, I'm ready.

Engineer: Tell me, do you “know” that the apple will fall to the floor when you let it go, or do you “believe” in it?

Consultant: What does it mean – “believe”? I know the apple will fall to the floor.

Engineer: Okay, let it go.

Consultant: Attention! Letting go…

Engineer: Oops!

Consultant: Well … that's cheating! It's not fair. What kind of experiment is this? Of course, it did not fall, because you grabbed it on the fly with your hand!

Engineer: Don't you think that this is how our life works? You cannot talk about anything in the future as what you know. Only about a certain probability.

Engineer: Everything that has happened in the past is, for the most part, knowledge: “knowledge-plus” or “knowledge-minus”. Someone, for example, does not believe that the Americans landed on the moon, but this is “faith-minus”. But basically everything that is in the past for a person is facts confirming knowledge. But from the present moment to the future, no one can give anything a one hundred percent guarantee. Too many forces are at work at the same time.

Consultant: That the Sun may not rise tomorrow? Just don’t talk to me about the possibility of an eclipse, I’m not a native. Even if there is an eclipse, even if there are clouds, the sun continues to shine.

Engineer: The sun is a star. The stars light up and go out. By the way, after the moment it goes out and we find out about it, eight minutes will pass – that is how much light flies to the Earth. Of course, the likelihood that the Sun will go out tomorrow is negligible. And you can make plans, taking into account that it will appear on the horizon in the morning, as usual. But this is still only “faith-plus”.

Writer: If the stars are lit, then someone needs it … Did you know that the ancient Greeks had two words for time? "Kairos" and "Chronos". “Chronos” is what you drew on the board – an arrow of time, a sequence of present moments that turn the future into the past, faith into knowledge. And “kairos” is a qualitative, not quantitative, like “chronos” characteristic. In one word, “kairos” is “on time”. “A time to take stones away and a time to get stones together; a time for kissing and a time to keep from kissing; A time for search and a time for loss; a time to keep and a time to give away; A time for undoing and a time for stitching; a time for keeping quiet and a time for talk; A time for love and a time for hate; a time for war and a time for peace.” Ecclesiastes.

All my martial arts teachers said that not only the speed of movement is important, but also timing.

Consultant: Don't you think it's “kairos” we break up today? :)

Engineer: I suggest you go and watch the sunset. You never know what might happen tomorrow :)

Writer: :) See you again, my friends!

05 Definitions and Laws

Consultant: Last time you said that laws are not invented, but discovered. I agree with physical laws. But religious commandments are still social laws, and, whatever one may say, they are invented. Take traffic rules, for example. If stones fell to the ground under the action of the law of gravity a million years ago, then until traffic appeared, there were no rules for this very traffic. After all, this is a pure convention, that you have to stand at the red light of the traffic light, and go at the green one. They could have come up with the opposite, everyone would have agreed and essentially nothing would have changed.

Writer: I remember when we were traveling in Venezuela, and early in the morning the taxi driver drove us through the empty city to the airport (we were going to fly to the highest waterfall in the world – Angel), he slipped through a red light several times without even thinking to stop. But then he suddenly began to slow down in front of a green traffic light and look left and right. Later, a friend explained to me that in Venezuela, many drivers and passengers of cars stopped at intersections were robbed, and they stopped stopping at traffic lights.

Engineer: One way or another, traffic rules are needed. And you need to follow them, otherwise everyone will get up in accidents and traffic jams. The actual patterns of better efficiency are evident. Therefore, here, too, I believe that the traffic law was discovered, not invented. And Moses had a revelation, of course, on the basis of knowledge about the history of his people for many centuries.

Consultant: And then Jesus came and said that the previous laws are canceled, here are the new ones!

Engineer: Not certainly in that way. Rather, he showed laws of a higher order from which the previous ones can be derived. It is as if people always stopped in their cars at red, and as soon as the green light came on, they would press on the gas without looking around – the law is above a specific situation. And the newly discovered law says that someone may not have time to brake, not see the signal. Therefore: look around – at the traffic lights, and at the cars in front, and at the cars behind, and at the cars on the left and right, and at pedestrians. The main thing is not to create an accident and not cause misfortune to yourself and others, and not to go only to the green light of a traffic light or to cross only to the “zebra crossing”.

Writer: “Let there be no thought that I have come to put an end to the law or the prophets. I have not come for destruction, but to make complete.” Gospel of Matthew.

Consultant: By the way, have you noticed that we are not erasing your definition of love from the whiteboard? I suggest leaving it for now. I started to have some thoughts from my professional practice. In any case, a succinct phrase for our philosophical conversations: “Love – is a property of all alive things, demonstrated in its interaction with another essence as a single whole with itself”. There are some philosophical categories: “love”, “alive”, “whole”.

Engineer: Yes thank you. I haven't really explained anything yet. And in this definition, every word is important and makes sense.

Writer: "Definition". Don't you think that the etymology of this word says about delineating limits, boundaries?

Engineer: And there is. You cannot embrace the immensity. And is there any sense to include in the model the laws in force on Mars and the Moon, when their application is studied only on Earth? We always carve out a piece of the world that we can “bite off, chew and digest”.

Consultant: Life-space according to Kurt Levin. By the way, you put the sign "Df:" – as we designated the definitions at the university. And this is an abbreviation for "Definition", which literally means – the establishment of boundaries. But I have a question about the text itself. You wrote “Love is a property of all alive things…”. What does “property” mean? How red or green, soft or hard?

Engineer: Rather, as cold or hot. Love as a property of living things is always there, but it manifests itself to a greater or lesser extent. I was looking for something accurate and versatile. Do you remember the “Love is…” chewing gum with a one-frame comic strip on a wrapper? Kim Grove from New Zealand began painting them on napkins for her future husband in the 60s. On each picture there is a situation with a girl and a boy and a caption with the continuation of the phrase “Love is…”. I think it is difficult even to calculate how many definitions of love were given in this format, because comics continue to be drawn to this day. But it is universal that love manifests itself in action or inaction in relation to another.

Writer: Why didn't you just write that this is a property of one person, manifested in relation to another person?

Engineer: Well, for me a person is a part of the living world. At the same time, I cannot say that not a single living being except for a human being is capable of manifesting love.

Consultant: Subject has been dealt with. But then it follows from your definition that the object of love may not be a living thing – some “another essence”. The stone on the road is also an essence.

Engineer: I propose an experiment. Take a rusty nail, walk up to any car and scratch a long and deep line on the hood or door in front of its owner. With a very high probability, you will be faced with a manifestation of the owner's love for his car, as if you scratched his skin, or even his heart, and not some piece of metal.

Writer: Priest Andrei Tkachev told a story from his life when he was in the hospital after having appendicitis removed. And in the same room another boy was lying and asked to eat, but the doctors forbade him, only his lips could be moistened. His own grandmother secretly brought in a fresh roll and gave it to her grandson. The boy died the next morning. It turns out that the grandmother showed love, fed and killed her grandson.

Consultant: It all depends on the context.

Engineer: And yet, as we can see, love is not just tender feelings, but action. And the action associated with the boundaries of the whole. Writer, remember, you said that you feel good when your wife feels good, and bad when she feels bad. For me, there is definitely love here. If I saw that my little child is holding a pair of knitting needles in his hands and is trying to shove them into an electrical outlet, then I would hit him on the hands or yank him, completely without affection, but definitely with love that exceeds even the instinct of my self-preservation.

Consultant: Are you saying that Matrosov's feat is also about love?

Engineer: For me, if a person sacrifices himself for the sake of others, then his understanding of the living whole definitely goes beyond himself.

Writer: Can I tell you about the heroes? ”Hero” is as much a devalued term today as “love”. I'm not talking about superheroes, it's about real life. Won a sports event or a TV show – and you are already a hero. For me, the hero is exactly the one who sacrificed himself for the sake of others. And you don't have to die while doing this. If he saved others and died – the hero was posthumous, he did not die – an alive hero.

Consultant: And if I donate a hundred rubles or even a thousand to a drunk who begs for alms? After all, I also sacrificed something of mine for the sake of another?

Writer: First, you never know the situation. Maybe he really needs to eat or even drink this afternoon so as not to die at night. And secondly, tell me, if I take a hundred rubles from my left pocket and put them in my right pocket, will I donate a hundred rubles? Not? And by and large, how does one person's pocket differ from another person's pocket? Where there is true love, there is no sacrifice. “I want mercy, not sacrifice,” said Jesus Christ. He loves all people, and went up to the Cross for everyone. According to your definition of “love” it turns out that He interacted with all of humanity, dead, living and not yet born, as a single whole with Himself. At the limit, I think it is possible to be in love with all people. It should be infinitely blissful and infinitely painful at the same time. Jesus, being God, loves us all, not as brothers and sisters, but as children. Children who continue to hate and kill each other…

Consultant: Here I will refrain from commenting. For me, Jesus is a historical figure. The man who organized the world's first global transnational organization. I know that an Orthodox priest can only be ordained by another priest, or several, therefore, in Orthodoxy, an unbreakable chain can be drawn from any priest to Jesus Christ. He, in fact, launched a startup two thousand years ago with the twelve apostles, pointed to love as a core value and the Kingdom of God as a mission. Incidentally, I am among the three of us in the most advantageous position here. If the Writer is one sixteenth – a priest, then I, if the relatives do not lie, one sixteenth – a Jew.

Engineer: One sixteenth, how's that?

Consultant: It's very simple: every person on this earth has one navel, two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers, and so on. So, if a Christian, in order to get to God, needs to live his life in a special way, repent of his sins and receive communion, then a Jew in order to get to God just needs to remain a Jew, for the Jews are the Chosen People of God!

Writer: Is that why you decided to learn to play the violin at forty?

Consultant: Who knows? Maybe – the genes. And, as I remember, you started going to church at the age of thirty-three.

Engineer: The age of Christ…

Consultant: Moses is closer to me. At forty he went into exile to gain wisdom, then forty years later he returned, brought the Jews out of Egypt and for another forty years led them through the desert.

Engineer: By the way, they almost immediately found the Promised Land, but the Jews refused to fight for it. God wanted to destroy everyone for cowardice, and Moses barely persuaded Him, recalling the promise that the Jews would find the promised land. Ultimately, a compromise was found – the Jews will still enter the lands of Israel, all except those who refused to fight. So it took forty years to walk in the desert for a generation to change. Moses, by the way, also did not enter the new lands.

Consultant: Moses agreed with the stakeholders in Egypt, wrote the documentation in the form of tablets, trained the users, and put the system into operation. I believe that the project has been successfully implemented!

Engineer: Who are the stakeholders?

Consultant: This is a management term – people who, in one way or another, positively or negatively, can influence the implementation of the project. By the way, I have a wonderful story about the violin and a new approach to project management that came into business from information technology. Remind me, I'll tell you sometime.

Engineer: So come on next time and tell us. I will remind you.

Writer: See you again, my friends!

06 Organization

Consultant: I think all the time about the ultimate foundations, how the World is really organized.

Engineer: An inquisitive mind…

Consultant: This is not only an idle interest. Only at the end of my life I don’t want to understand that I was going in the wrong direction, that I missed something important, when it’s too late.

Writer: How do you imagine this moment? The moment when you understand how the World works. A second before that you did not understand, and suddenly … You discovered the main law, you stood in the middle of the World and understood everything about it. The clock froze for a moment and… moved on. And the World went on. World didn’t even stop, World didn’t even notice that you understood something about it! And now you also have to live on.

Consultant: But I will already become different. And I am a part of the World, which means that at this moment the World will also change. The moment that separates “before” and “after”. For me and for the World. And if I change, then I will begin to change the World with greater awareness. As if I had been in a dark room before and moved slowly, bumping into objects, and then they turned on the light – and now I can quickly go where I need to, take what I need, rearrange things neatly.

Writer: The World is not a room. Imagine that the light was not turned on, but the sun rose. And you found yourself in the morning spring forest, or high in the mountains sparkling with snow, or on the shore of the endless ocean. What are you going to change there? And most importantly – why?

Engineer: He will start collecting garbage left there before him by other people :)

Consultant: Maybe I'll start. If I really see it, with all my being. You know how it happens: you look and do not see, you listen and do not hear. You get used to your little world, and the World passes by unnoticed. That is why our conversations are invaluable to me. You mark some important facets that I did not pay attention to before. Now, if I asked you to name one thing really important in this World from your point of view?

Writer: A human … "A human needs a human" as in Tarkovsky's "Solaris". Yes, you yourself are talking about this, about our communication and disputes. “Communication” – do you feel the semantics? Connecting into a community, into something in common. Well, or at least finding something in common. Without other people, without other parts, one cannot be either whole or happy. This is where I gradually begin to agree with the definition on the whiteboard, because people show love in communication. Why did Dostoevsky write a century and a half ago, but reads as if he were our contemporary? Because he wrote about humans! Many things change quickly and lose their relevance, but a human remains a human. It is important.

Engineer: Yes, many of our classics wrote about man and love. Maybe because in their time there were no "classics" and they read mainly biblical texts? After reading the Bible, I begin to see references to stories from the Testaments, analogies and paraphrases. I didn't notice this layer at all before, I missed it. It's like going to museums and looking at paintings, knowing nothing about the authors, about their life stories, about the time in which they worked. Yes, you will see the form, you will see the content, but the context will be completely absent. Try to go to the exhibition just like that, and then repeat the review with a guide and you will catch the difference. So, I am very grateful to the Writer for the recommendation to read the Bible. It was as if I received a bunch of keys from a thousand doors. But, returning to the important question. What do I see in the World when I look at it? Systems. Not even just systems, but cybernetic systems. Sorry, it is a professional deformation. Just don't confuse “cyber” with something related only to the Internet. I ran into this when we started working on the cybersecurity of industrial information systems. It was believed that a cyberattack was when the “bad guys” stole money from cards used to pay on the Internet. The very concept of "cyber" was introduced in the middle of the XX century by Norbert Wiener, the father of automation and cybernetics. The word “cyber” is Greek, meaning steering a sailing ship towards its intended goal in a situation where the wind and currents are constantly changing. Cyber is about control and communication, about control using feedback. Here you are driving, for example, on the road in a modern car, stuffed with electronics. Someone can intercept control remotely and that's it – the brakes do not work, the steering wheel does not obey, the speed is displayed incorrectly. This is not money from the card, here you would stay alive! Or another interesting example from a completely different area. Remember, we talked a lot about the cyberattack of Russian hackers in the US elections. Why a cyberattack? Just imagine: someone breaks into a computer and copies secret documents of one of the parties or a presidential candidate running in the elections. It would seem – a common theft. But if these documents are published, become widely publicized and, thanks to this, another candidate becomes president – this is already an influence on the management of a system the size of a country for several years! That is, a cyberattack is an attack on communication and control systems, whether it be control of a country, a car or a pacemaker. Do you remember the fire experiment? You can turn on the fire alarm and people will obediently leave the building. Isn't it a cyberattack? In general, in our modern world, it is no longer important who built the system, it is important who took over control of it! We have not been in direct contact with nature for a long time, with rare exceptions. In most cases, between us and nature, us and other people, there are various systems created by other people. And humans themselves are open dynamic cybernetic systems.

Consultant: So, what we have: humans and communication, cybernetic systems as prisms through which you can look at the World. My view is close to both of yours, but still different. I see organizational development everywhere.

During my twenty years of experience, I have worked in different organizations. First there was an organization with only three people. Then there was the regional organization. Then the national one. In the meantime, my wife and I started a family business with a dozen employees, which existed for five years before we sold it to our own employees. Now I work for a multinational company, a world leader in my field. That is, the experience is rich and varied, I have seen and felt a lot with my skin. Just before moving from a national company to a multinational one, I wrote that very book "Management for Dummies". Now is the right time to start writing "Management for Dummies 2".

Writer: Well, is there really a fundamental difference? People are working everywhere. It’s hard to believe that someone, simply by moving to a larger company, will start to perform twice as well.

Consultant: Yes and no. On the one hand, of course, it is not the size that matters, but the level of organization of Organization. A person with the same talents and dedication, moving to a more efficient company and doing the same as in the previous one, can receive much more compensation only due to the fact that the company as a whole has higher profits. On the other hand, it is the size of the organization that dictates the demand for the level of organization. In my book, I have listed various management theories, from Taylor's scientific to “system” and “process” approaches, and even “management by values”. Then I believed that all methods work, you just need to choose a specific method for a specific situation. But then I wondered why over the last couple of hundred years about a dozen management theories lost their effectiveness and gave way to new approaches? The answer lay on the surface – the size of the company. Organizations have grown and continue to grow in terms of coverage of the territory and, accordingly, number of employees. The XX century has become the century of mergers and acquisitions. And an organization of one hundred thousand people, distributed all over the world, cannot be managed in the same way as a company of one hundred people working in one building. Most organizations, once born, begin their journey of growth. They absorb other organizations or, failing to cope, collapse or are absorbed by others, more powerful. It is difficult for a kiosk to compete with a supermarket – a supermarket is better able to withstand the blow of any crisis than a kiosk. Plus, at large volumes, the cost of goods and services decreases, and efficiency increases.

Engineer: The strong eat the weak…

Consultant: The former youthful communist maximalism speaks in you! What can you do with reality? But, in fact, I have something to please you, not everything is so sad. To begin with, I would paraphrase – instead of "The strong eat the weak" it would be more accurate to say: "The more organized transforms the less organized." I will say more. From the height to which I climbed, absolutely amazing views of reality opened up. If you look at any global market segment, any industry represented globally, then you will see only a few large companies that have already acquired everything that could be acquired and rested against each other. Now they have similar services, and they compete with each other around the world, unable, as in the past, to simply absorb the competitor. Small local shopkeepers are not counted, and all more or less large local competitors have long been absorbed. And this is where miracles begin! The struggle for internal efficiency begins. And if earlier they demanded from employees – “Be the strongest, the fastest, the most powerful”. But now such leadership does more harm than good. And modern requirements look like the ten commandments “Respect corporate culture, do not steal, do not testify, love your colleague, but first love the Client!”. And these are not empty words. Without this, everything will fall apart to the extent that the old school management skills of leadership still work. Imagine two large companies A and B preparing to merge. Who from the old management of both companies will run the new company? Obviously, those who can manage an entire company of A + B size. I like the formula for organizational success from one of the management gurus, Ichak Adizes:

More and more companies are focusing on internal disintegration, which wastes resources and wastes energy on internal conflict and inefficiency. And if the increase in external integration, Dr.Adizes associates with the ability to realize the emerging opportunities, then the decrease in internal disintegration he associates with mutual trust and respect for each other in the organization. At the same time, Adizes calls ultimate integration as love. Doesn't it look like anything? :)

Engineer: It is very similar to my definition, if you take the organization as a whole, and people as living entities that interact with each other.

Writer: What does it mean to take people as living entities? And what else are they?

Consultant: Oh, believe me, this is not the case in organizations. Do you know what HR – Human Resources? Although in fact people, with the help of technology, of course, are not resources themselves, but transform resources into goods and services. For making a stick of sausage, a cow or a pig is a resource!

Engineer: Well, maybe when providing services, when people are wasting their time and energy, they are wasting themselves as a resource?

Consultant: In any case, the time of loners is long gone. Look around you, it is already impossible to find anything that would have been created by one person “inside and out”. Everything is the result of organized work. We live in a World of Organizations. I still found a moment when tolerance was in trend. And this is understandable – transnational companies expanded to more and more countries, which sometimes in the past or present had interstate or interethnic conflicts. How to remove internal corporate conflicts that increase internal disintegration? Tolerance was the answer. But tolerance is a passive state of suppression of aggression, rejection of the other. This is necessary, but not sufficient. It is more effective when employees not only do not conflict, but, on the contrary, care and help each other. Therefore, paradoxically, having overcome the stage of aggressive capitalism, large global corporations create almost “Heaven on the Earth”, simply because at this size of organizations, shareholders benefit from an increase in the level of love within the company and outside it.

Engineer: Don't you find your conclusions too romantic? Get out of yours and go to any other, not so global, organization in the neighborhood and I guarantee you will see a completely different picture.

Consultant: Change doesn't happen all at once. But for me the trend is obvious. Evolution, if you like. More organized organizations survive, their number decreases within one of the segments of the global division of labor, and these organizations become global, competing for the consumer, by and large, with several other equally large companies. The division of labor itself, that is, specialization, is, of course, growing. But this is not a division as a complete separation, but a division into effective parts that interact within the framework of an even more effective whole, thereby increasing the total degree of love, according to your definition! :)

Engineer: How he turned everything out. We went to “capitalist hell”, but will we come to “capitalist paradise”? How do you like that? Where is the world rolling? …

Consultant: It rolls because it has the shape of a ball :) And you can't do anything about it.

Writer: I'm not worried at all. There must be an Apocalypse according to the Scriptures, so we are rolling towards it. Before the second coming of Christ, there will be an Antichrist who will unite the World, but not with love, but with anti-love, since he is the “Anti-Christ”.

Consultant: On this positive note, I propose to stop today.

Engineer: I agree.

Writer: See you again, my friends!

07 Revolutions

Engineer: Last time you talked about the evolution of organizations, and I want to tell you on my fingers about the industrial evolution and about current technologies. Since you want to get to the bottom of the world order, you cannot do without understanding the current state of affairs in information technology.

Consultant: Just simpler, please, so that I can not only understand, but also retell to someone else.

Writer: I will, of course, listen. But not more. Where am I, and where is the industry…

Engineer: Do not worry, I will try to tell you simply and clearly. One could start from the moment when a person became erect, freed his hands and took a stick in them, but let's immediately move to the end of the eighteenth century, let's start with the so-called first industrial revolution.

Consultant: You're incorrigible. You promised to talk about evolution and immediately started with the revolution! :)

Engineer: Well, first of all, we are talking about the industrial revolution. And secondly, I believe that each of the four industrial revolutions that I will talk about is just a step in industrial evolution. It's just that evolutionary changes are happening slowly, but there are some areas where changes are happening quickly and on a large scale – these are revolutionary changes. So, the first industrial revolution is associated with the foundation of the first factories and plants in Great Britain and the transition from manual labor to machine labor, the use of the power of water and steam.

Writer: Was it then that “Luddites” appeared who broke machines, fearing that they would take all jobs away from people?

Engineer: Yes sir. But the machines were not abandoned. Tell me, are you ready to break your washing machine and go back to hand washing? I’m sure not. By the way, the washing machine is a good example to illustrate. It's like a small, well-automated plant in your home. The washing machine is supplied with electricity and water, and there is a drainage system. Chemicals are being loaded. Raw materials in the form of dirty raw materials are transformed into a product in the form of clean linen. Inside there are water level and temperature sensors. Some factories are not much more complex than washing machines.

Consultant: The analogy is clear. It turns out that progress has come and millions of women laundresses have lost their jobs. My wife will definitely not go on strike over this. :)

Engineer: A hundred years later, the next one happened – the second industrial revolution. Factories came to power, conveyors, division of labor, specialization and mass production.

Consultant: With the division of labor and its specialization, the quality and speed of each stage of production increases, but at the same time it becomes necessary to coordinate these stages. The sunrise of management comes at a time when divided labor needs to be combined!

Engineer: The third industrial revolution is already from the middle of the twentieth century, computerization and industrial automation. And now we have industrial revolution 4.0 – cyber-physical systems, smart factories.

Writer: I apologize, but it all looks like a marketing ploy. Of course, computers have become faster and smaller. “Wi-fi” has appeared. But somehow this does not attract a revolution. What is the fundamental difference between the third and the fourth revolution?

Consultant: Well, what's not clear here? Take a look at the whiteboard! Human cognized himself, as he realized he embodied himself in machines and moved on. He transferred muscles first – the first revolution. Then the beginnings of the nervous system appeared, the coordination of various organs – the second revolution. The third is that the person has transferred the computing brain to the machine. And now the fourth revolution – machines are already communicating with each other without a human, that is, they have consciousness! But do not worry about the fifth revolution happening, a human must understand his soul, but it is difficult to understand it… Especially the “Russian soul”! :)

Engineer: Nice. I can agree with the first three, but I would say that the distinguishing feature of the fourth industrial revolution is intelligence. Artificial intelligence, of course, is like artificial muscles, nerves and brains before that.

Writer: We have already gone through this. First, nanotechnology, now here is artificial intelligence! Smart everywhere! Smart refrigerator, smart home, smart city…

Consultant: Smart washing machine, smart factory…

Engineer: Well enough, enough already! Let me explain everything to you. I hope you still remember how we programmed for five years at the university? Listen to how everything changed over the next twenty years. With the beginning of the third industrial revolution, the first computer, the first controller, did indeed appear. And the profession of a programmer was very promising. Programs began to be used everywhere. But by a certain point, it became clear that it was ineffective to write a program from scratch every time. Working blocks accumulated, they were collected into libraries and, instead of programming, they were configured with blocks.

Consultant: I agree that in the past it took a lot of work to create a website. Now, in ten minutes, you can drag and drop frames, type in text, and voila – a great website!

Engineer: Of course, there is still room for programming, but the most interesting thing began with the advent of artificial intelligence! Someone wrote a program. From that moment on, it does not change. Wrote with an error – it will work with an error. Or the situation has changed – you need to rewrite the program, update. It is as if a person was born with only innate reflexes.

Consultant: But what about conditioned reflexes?

Engineer: Exactly! Man, and many other living beings, are not limited to innate reflexes. They learn from their experience, and action in each new situation is determined not only by what was “programmed” initially, but also taking into account the experience of previous situations. This is intelligence – changing behavior after learning from experience. Now, in the fourth industrial revolution, we have entered the era of adaptive machines. In this case Writer is right – if a technology over a hundred nanometers is not nanotechnology, and if the system is not adaptive, it does not learn from its own experience, it is not a “smart” system. But the product with the image of the brain sells for more!

Consultant: In short, the Writer! The doomsday of the machine uprising is approaching and leads us to your beloved Apocalypse! :)

Engineer: Fortunately, not everything is so fast. Why are pilots still sitting on airplanes, and operators in factories? Because man is still the most adaptive element of man-machine systems! Let's take the same washing machine. Who really washes – you or the programmer who put the program into the automatic machine?

Consultant: My wife washes.

Engineer: But I’ll argue here. Your wife loads laundry, powder and chooses the mode. So, the washing machine program does not yet understand what kind of laundry is loaded into it – linen, synthetics or cotton and, therefore, uses a person as an intelligent sensor that can determine this and transfers this information to the program by pressing buttons or turning knobs.

Writer: As I understand you, a person with his natural intelligence is still necessary for machines, but this is not for long?

Engineer: Yes, that is right. And, although the process is not fast, it is still. And the prospects can become scary. Here you should be afraid of not smart teapots. If you do not just remove a person from the machine, but replace natural intelligence with an artificial one, without prejudice to adaptability, then all restrictions on size, speed and environment of movement will go away with the person. Imagine for a second a combat military aircraft that can maneuver completely ignoring overloads!

Consultant: I warned you! But listen, did they come up with something like that to make the programs adaptive? Put another program inside that periodically overwrites the original?

Engineer: Not. Exactly as you said – they tried to copy a human. They made algorithms that learn when data passes through them. In fact, the ideas and algorithms have been ready for a long time. The required amount of data was not available. There was a computer, and the data was entered by the people manually.

Consultant: Human is the weak link!

Engineer: In this case, it turns out like this. But as soon as the Internet of Things appeared, that is, when machines began to communicate with each other without human participation, huge amounts of information began to accumulate, the so-called "Big Data", and it became possible to run this data through models and train them…

Writer: Now I understand why half of the children's room in our house is littered with toys, and give the children a new one every time! Their natural intelligence requires new data to develop!

Engineer: By the way, at some point in time, they abandoned attempts to create at once a complete artificial intelligence, that is, a machine indistinguishable from a human. They followed the path of partial artificial intelligence – speech recognition, text recognition, text translation, pattern recognition, and so on. And they have advanced quite far at the moment. At the same time, a technological leap is not quantitative, but qualitative. Who prevented before hanging every entrance and every piece of road with cameras? Yes, only before a hundred cameras meant a hundred monitors for a person in a control room, but now, videos from a thousand cameras are processed automatically, and only the one with useful information is displayed on the monitor.

Consultant: Or without a person at all! Exceeded the speed limit? Receive a fine by email!

Engineer: Yes, the examples are endless. The main thing that needs to be understood here, returning to technological evolution, is that every time with a new technological revolution there was a leap not only in technology, but also in the economic structure, in the thinking of people. Each time, one economy was replaced by a new, more efficient one and displaced the previous one. Well, have we made some progress in understanding how the World really works?

Consultant: Perfectly. And I am even able to explain it to my wife tonight with the example of a washing machine! By the way, I was here recently in a sports store. So: at the checkout, you no longer need to bring things one by one to read the barcode. You just throw an armful of sportswear into a plastic box, and the full list and the total amount to be paid are displayed on the screen. Apparently, a chip with detailed information is already sewn into each thing. So we are one step away from the moment when the washing machine starts sorting linen, synthetics and cotton by itself!

Writer: How scary to live… I suggest we stop for today. See you again, my friends!

08 Evolution

Consultant: I read a little about the human nervous system. It turns out that the signal travels at a speed of less than one hundred meters per second. It turns out that a digital signal travels through optical cables at the speed of light from one side of the country to another faster than a nerve impulse from one side of the head to the other!

Engineer: I'll tell you more. You probably guess that nerve cells do not connect to each other like wires that are twisted at the ends? Each nerve cell has one axon – a process through which an electrical signal goes from the cell, and many dendrites – processes through which the signal comes to the cell.

Writer: Dendro is a tree from Greek.

Engineer: So, dendrites branch, and the place where the axon connects to the dendrite is called the synapse. In this case, the signal is transmitted chemically. An electrical discharge comes, the axon releases a chemical substance – a neurotransmitter, this substance acts on the dendrite and after that it generates its own electrical signal, which is transmitted to the receiving nerve cell. Electricity-chemistry-electricity. This, by the way, is used in pharmacology: drugs, painkillers and also poisons. One chemical compound activates nerve impulses, like neurotransmitters, another compound, hitting the right place, can suppress signal transmission.

Writer: What is the difference between white neurons and gray ones?

Engineer: Are you asking about white and gray matter in the brain? The gray matter is just the bodies of nerve cells, and the white matter is the connections between them: dendrites and axons. The nerve cell itself is like a separate computer, not, even like a separate industrial controller.

Consultant: What is the fundamental difference between a computer and an industrial controller? Is the controller more reliable?

Engineer: Not only. Industrial controllers were created to control technological processes. And to some extent, their architecture repeated the way the human nervous system was arranged, at the level of understanding of the middle of the twentieth century, of course, at the time when controllers were created.

Sensors (S), as senses, transmit information about temperature, pressure, differential pressure, level in the tank and so on (depending on the sensor) through afferent connections to the “brain” – a programmable logic controller. These signals are read, processed and calculated, then, at the end of the program cycle, commands are sent to the actuators (A) by efferent connections. Then the loop repeats over and over:

1. inputs;

2. signal processing and calculations;

3. outputs.

Consultant: It turns out that the controller can interact and control processes in the external environment?

Engineer: Within the available sensors and actuators, yes. If there is a self-diagnosis, then it can control the internal parameters as well. But if we are talking about a person, then the general regulation is carried out not only by the nervous, but also by the immune and endocrine systems. At the same time, the nervous one is the fastest.

Consultant: The importance of communication speed is understandable. Especially if you take a multinational company as a large organism. If the signal about hot or cold from my fingers would come only after a few minutes to the brain, then I would have lost my hand long ago before I could pull it down! It's the same in a large company. In general, it seems to me that only now, with the advent of fast Internet, mobile devices and cloud data storage, it has become possible for humanity to exist as a single organism.

Writer: You know, in my body there are no cells dying of hunger, but in the world it is not at all like that!

Engineer: By the way, did you know that nerve cells always eat first? They constantly need an influx of glucose from the blood for vigorous activity, and they practically are not able to store it or generate it. Therefore, brain cells “eat” all the time. But if the level of glucose in the blood rises by more than 0.1 percent, then the pancreas begins to secrete insulin, and then all other cells in the body can receive glucose. Without insulin, glucose can only be absorbed by nerve cells.

Consultant: I have always said that organizational management is "nerve-racking" and should be well paid! :)

Engineer: Please do not apply the diagram that I drew on the board head-on to organizational development, because it is outdated. There is no intelligence, that is, adaptation based on the use of experience. In the body, of course, there is not one nerve cell, but billions of cells that form all kinds of network configurations, but even if you draw a diagram of one nerve cell, then I prefer the way our physiologist Petr Anokhin, Pavlov's student. He described it like this:

Consultant: Admit it – did you draw the star yourself?

Engineer: The star – yes, it is mine :) It's just easier to draw five connections. It turns out that before the nerve cell emits a signal further along the efferent axon, one triggering afferentation, that is, the incoming signal, is not enough. A synthesis of triggering afferentation, situational afferentation (“what else is there, what is the context?”), memory (“were there similar situations in the past, how did they end?”) and dominant motivation (this is when there is a strong desire to satisfy a certain need, and anything can serve as a "trigger").

Writer: Well, that is, the signal can "enter" and "not exit"? Loop somewhere. Or vice versa – to accumulate, and then break out on a far-fetched occasion?

Consultant: Gentlemen! Yes, this is a cycle of experience in Gestalt philosophy! Just do not confuse it with the life cycle of organization by Ichak Adizes. Gestalt cycle for a specific situation, which, of course, are also different and can last from a few seconds to many years.

Writer: I don't know anything about Gestalt, but this curve reminds me of a conventional fight in Iaido – the art of using the Japanese sword that I practice. And there can be one fight – a whole life lived. Judge for yourself, I will briefly describe the very first combination. Although it is the first on the list, it can be practiced for years and by its execution the teacher will always see the level of the trainee. So, the first combination is “Ippon me Mae”: “The fencer meets the enemy. Both are sitting. The enemy prepares to attack. The fencer quickly draws his sword, slits the enemy's throat and finishes him with a downward slash. Shaking the blood off the blade, the fencer sheathes the sword and stands up with dignity."

Consultant: This is tin! Did you know that our Orthodox writer is a cold-blooded killer?

Writer: Come on. It's just training. Nobody really cuts anyone, just shadow fighting. Although the training sword, Iaito, is a complete replica of a real Japanese sword, in weight and size, even the stingray skin on the handle, only the blade is made of a non-magnetic non-sharpening alloy. And in one combination (kata – in Japanese) there are so many small nuances: angles, turns, centimeters. The position of the eyes is important. In general, you can watch a video on the Internet, or, according to your inner feelings, it is very similar to what you drew on the blackboard. That being said, there is one option for doing the kata correctly, and a million options for making a mistake.

Engineer: As the same Pyotr Anokhin said, there are an infinite number of combinations of neuron connections, and organization is the rejection of unnecessary degrees of freedom in the current situation!

Consultant: Yes, the more personal freedom everyone has, the less general organization everyone has… I thought, looking once again at the definition of “love” on the whiteboard… How is it that at first there was no life; then the first living cell appeared; and now, after billions of years, we have what we have – the World full of diversity?

Engineer: There are two main theories where the first living cell could have originated – at the bottom of the ocean or in hot mud baths, as in Kamchatka. The second option is closer to me, since it is important not only the presence of a chemical broth, but also ultraviolet light, which could not reach the bottom of the ocean. In addition, it still remains a mystery how the cell membrane was formed, and the size of the pores in the clay is appropriate in size, and the clay walls could become the cradle for the first living cell.

Writer: Incredible!

Engineer:Very likely.

Writer: I'm talking about something else. The Bible at the very beginning says: "And the Lord God created man from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul." And also – Lazarus, who was resurrected by Christ, never laughed after his resurrection. He laughed only once when he saw that a man in the market was stealing an earthen pot. Lazar said: "Clay steals clay"!

Consultant: What a twist! But further – even more interesting! At first there were unicellular, then multicellular appeared, then many-many-cellular… At the same time, multicellular, that is, more complexly organized entities, are more effective. Because if this were not so, then the primordial broth would still gurgle on Earth. It turns out that there is some unknown force that all the time increases the organization of living matter! And if you imagine the first step of development, when the first multicellular creature appeared – a two-celled entity, then inside it two living entities-cells began to interact with each other, as a single whole with themselves! That is, if we take love as a property similar to temperature, then the total “temperature of love” on Earth has increased!

Engineer: I seem to begin to understand where you are going…

Consultant: Exactly! You gave the definition of love, and I propose a whole law based on it! The difference in love in the world is always greater than zero! dL> 0, where L is the total love on Earth, which is constantly growing! If this were not so, then the world, as we see it now, would not exist.

It is clear that many forces are at work at the same time. And if an airplane is flying in the sky, this does not mean that the law of universal gravitation has ceased to work. And if you mentally climb to the moon and, again mentally, observe the Earth throughout the entire time from the moment of the birth of life to the current moment, then it will simply phenomenologically be obvious that life does not survive, but, once it is born, it spreads and grows, it is divided in itself and is organized again at a higher level. And at each cycle, at each iteration, at each earthly inhalation and at each earthly exhalation – the total love increases! Writer, could you please remind us of the Law of Love, which Jesus Christ formulated to replace the Ten Commandments? …

Writer: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Consultant: Now, if I now take the definition of “love” from the Engineer and paraphrase these two commandments, it will turn out: “The first commandment: do not forget that you are a living whole part of a living One Whole. The second, similar to it: when interacting with your neighbor, do not forget that you are two living whole parts of a common living One Whole.”

Engineer: What about evolution?

Consultant: So this is evolution! Love, once manifested, increases over time. And if humans forget about it, evolution will correct humans! You said – "laws are not invented, but discovered." Here's another law for you. The Law of Love. We have just rediscovered it two thousand years after the birth of Christ!

Engineer: This needs to be considered…

Consultant: I agree. I'm shocked myself!

Writer: See you again, my friends!

09 Development

Engineer: It turns out strange somehow. After all, entropy has not been canceled. With the passage of time, energy should dissipate, orderliness should decrease. And you seem to logically show that the organization on Earth is constantly growing. Some kind of perpetual motion machine…

Consultant: Why is it a perpetual motion machine? The sun is shining, here's a constant flow of energy. Ultimately, according to some scientists, the Universe expands and cools down, so life is fed from this.

Writer: And when the Universe stops expanding, stops, and then generally starts to shrink?

Consultant: Then not only our law will have to be revised! :) By the way, if the Universe is infinite from us in any direction, then you and I are in its very center! But seriously, returning to entropy, in my practice of organizational development I stopped using the word “build”, but I try to use the word “grow”. “Grow the team,” “grow the process,” and so on. Everything, as our Writer likes – respect for words. It turns out slower, but more durable. For example, if you start building a house and plant a tree next to it. In a few months, you can raise several floors up, and the tree will grow hardly a few centimeters. But abandon everything, leave it, and come back in five years. What will you see? It is very likely that you will see the dilapidated skeleton of an unfinished building and next to it – an adult strong tree!

Engineer: Well, it also depends on the soil…

Consultant: Sure. But initially it all depends on whether you plant a stone or a seed. With people, this is clearly visible: put one in the position, and he is like a stone: while you push, he rolls, if you stop touching, he lies where he was put. On the contrary – forget about the other person, you will return after a while, and there everything has blossomed, the fruits are ripe, and he still requires a bigger pot from you, because growth is slowing down!

Engineer: Do you know why plants grow upward?

Writer: Are they reaching for warmth, for the Sun?

Engineer: Not. Even if the seed is placed so deep that there is the same temperature around it, it will still stretch upward with its stem and downward with its roots. It turns out that plants have special cells that “sense” gravity! Accordingly, the plant begins to grow towards the opposite center of the Earth. They even did experiments in space in zero gravity – they unrolled the pots with plants: they grew in the center, against the centrifugal force.

Writer: Amazing!

Consultant: And the living plants themselves do not seem amazing to you? Take an acorn for example and plant it in the ground. In a hundred years there will be a huge oak tree. Yes, just by weight you can compare for a start – an acorn and an oak! But the acorn didn’t have a few trucks with wood with him. It just got into the soil and started growing, taking everything from the environment. And after all, from the very beginning, a plan was laid in it to develop not into a pine, not into a birch, but into an oak! The very word "development" is also interesting. First there is “envelopment” (from “envelope”), and then development. Oh, and I forgot to tell you the story about the violin!

Engineer: Exactly! I completely forgot to remind you. Something about violin, project management and information technology.

Consultant: Since we started talking today about “building a house” and “planting a tree”, then about “raising a son” we also need to say a few words. I started playing the violin for a reason. I will say more, after I started, now I never say “never”! Because before that I was sure that I could do almost everything in my life, but playing music or singing is not my topic, and all that remains is to look with respect from the bottom up at the musicians who can do what is beyond my control. However, at the age of two, we took our son to violin lessons. It turned out that there is a school founded by a Japanese, Shinichi Suzuki, in which children begin to teach music and play various musical instruments from early childhood.

Writer: How is it possible? You can make a small violin, I admit it. But how to teach kids the music when they don't know the letters yet? At two years old, you said you started?

Consultant: This is one of the foundations of the method. Suzuki once asked a question – “How do small children start talking at the age when they don't know letters and words yet? Can the same be applied to violin playing? " It turned out – it can. First, you learn to play melodies, and then, when they are already “under your skin,” you are shown the notes. The same as with the letter literacy: first, children recognize the taste of an apple, and then they are shown a picture and said – “This is the letter A – Apple!”. But this is not the most important thing that I wanted to tell. And it’s not even that a parent must be involved in the class so that a triangle is formed: teacher-student-parent, and so that the child has an example and a musical environment in front of his eyes. I wanted to tell you about the Agile approach

Engineer: Is it when all stages are not planned long and carefully before implementation, as in the classical approach to project management, but they quickly create a simple viable product, immediately show it to the customer, receive feedback, and so, in cycles of several weeks, improve functionality? Many digital product development teams do this today.

Consultant: Listen to the story, it will be interesting. Once I came to a regular seminar of the curator of our violin teacher from London. We were just starting to study, and we just went to see how other children played. And after the concert there was a separate conversation with the parents. And so this slender English grandmother with a violin, who had studied with the founder himself, began a story. It turned out that since she travels a lot and everywhere with a violin, she meets a lot of people who, in their childhood, also began to learn to play the violin in a classical music school. Conversations start, people tell their stories. And in most stories, after years of difficult practice, the violin was put aside. People remember this with sadness and regret.

Engineer: Many are learning, but only a few become virtuosos. This is logical.

Consultant: In fact of the matter. You take the child, set him a big, difficult-to-achieve goal, to which you have to go for many years. With a high probability, at some point, he will leave the distance, drop his hands and become unhappy, since the goal has not been achieved.

Writer: Or, on the contrary, he will become happy if he abandons what his parents forcibly imposed on him.

Consultant: All the same – torment before that. And in the Suzuki method it is different. I experienced it myself when I decided to study by myself. My teacher and I started to learn how to play one simple melody “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” on the violin. After a couple of weeks I could already play it on one string, after another couple of weeks – completely, with my fingers pressing the strings. This is an incredible experience! A month ago, you were an ordinary person, and now you are standing with a violin in your hands and playing a simple but beautiful melody! I was happy!

Writer: You have been studying for almost a year now, is there any further progress?

Consultant: Now I'm playing the twelfth melody from the first book. At the same time, the study of musical notation has just begun to approach. But it is not important. It is important that I become happy from the very beginning, from the very first tune. With each new melody learned, the skill grows, and the happiness grows! From the very beginning, the goal was not to embrace the immensity, but to achieve a small, crooked, but whole and lively result. Now each round of development is a new round of happiness! Now it seems to me that I will play the violin for the rest of my life.

Engineer: Well, cool! Agile approach in all its glory! Do you know that Life itself works according to "agile"? A human baby's heart begins to beat in the third week after conception! And after three months the baby is like a real human, only the size of a ripe apple. Further – only growth and development.

Consultant: In this case, the classic approach to project management can be compared to the creation of a “Frankenstein monster”! :) First, a whole body is assembled from parts of different corpses, and then they try to revive it. Again the same question – "grow or build?" In this case, there is a place for both the first and the second. About the monster – I said this for contrast. If you are building a house, then it is wiser to do it step by step, like a hundred other houses were built before. Another thing is that life began to change rapidly, the situation tomorrow is not similar to the situation yesterday, the old proven approaches cease to be effective. You have to move in small steps in order to correct in time and not make a big mistake. Maybe that's why the agile approach is becoming more and more popular?

Engineer: All we are talking about is that the living is not living, the whole is not the whole. I offer such a conditional scheme for the image of any living essence:

Consultant: Very similar to the diagram from Kurt Lewin's field theory: P-person and around – living space. But this knot on the top of the border is your industrial controller?

Engineer: Not really, but close to that. Look. What you see is any living essence: the first living cell, an acorn, an oak, a fish, a bird, a human. The main thing here is that there is a border between the internal and external environment, and it is kept in balance.

Writer: The first life appeared on the border of the Worlds…

Consultant: I will say more, from what I observe – a new life appears only inside another already living essence, and then it separates and becomes, as it were, independent.

Engineer: I did not draw sensors (senses) and actuators. It is clear that they are both inside and outside. And the border is not deaf, but, like a cell membrane, it allows metabolism. A living essence is an open dynamic system that maintains a balance between the inner and outer world. As long as the balance is maintained, homeostasis works, “something” lives, and this is visible to the naked eye. Both the internal state and the external environment are monitored, this is how the border and its control appear. When boundaries are violated, illness or even death occurs.

Writer: How graceful!

Engineer: Do you remember the Consultant said that the red light of a traffic light is pure convention? I'm starting to doubt it. Imagine that in the winter in the forest a hunter shoots an animal, and then goes to check: “hit – didn’t hit”. If he finds red spots of blood on the snow, then you can go to catch up with the beast – the integrity of the living creature is broken and the forces will leave him.

Consultant: Now it is clear why women, in order to attract the attention of men, paint their lips in bright red!

Engineer: And wear red dresses! As if subconsciously saying – "look, I'm all open!"

Consultant: By the way, about the subconscious … How do you like this modification of your scheme?

Writer: Is this the union of two living essences?

Consultant: No, it is still the same single essence, or rather, even a separate Human. I just enlarged the knot controlling the worlds on the border a little and highlighted the conscious part – above, and the unconscious – inside. You can call it a brain, but it is clear that everything is more complicated. The main thing is that consciousness is only the tip of the iceberg that supports life in a person, but it is directed outward and, if consciousness is joint knowledge, then it is something that unites people into something more and, possibly, unites them into something too whole and also alive…

Writer: Here I am looking at your scheme and it reminds me of all this – the theater. Stage, orchestra pit or backstage and large auditorium. Moreover, now there is a performance, three “characters” are standing and talking on the stage: an Engineer, a Consultant and a Writer. And the true “I” sits in the theater porter, but sometimes it is forgotten and completely merges with the “Writer” on stage.

Consultant: I'll tell you more – we are all now sitting in our "theaters", where the same performance is being performed in parallel, only we see it each in its own way. And even then – we see, until the spotlights are extinguished. Although, even if the spectator does not see anything, life is in full swing behind the stage!

Engineer: Well, then let me add my own five cents. Imagine a baby. Who is the first to appear on the stage of consciousness? Mum. Then dad. Then brothers, sisters, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, and so on. And only at two or three years old a little person appears on the stage with the name that the child hears most often. Self-consciousness appears!

Consultant: But the “spectator – I” by this moment has been sitting in the hall for a long time and looking at the unfolding performance. From the very beginning to the very end. Alone, in an empty theater porter…

Writer: I will only say between us. Sometimes it seems to me that I am not alone in the theater. Someone sits next to me and looks at the stage with me. Someone who is the only one who can see both the play and the real me, sitting in a theater chair. It becomes both scary and incredibly blissful at such a moment. And there is a hope that when the curtains close at the end of the performance, we will get up from the chairs with Him and together we will leave the theater into the Real World…

It's late now. See you again, my friends!

10 Love

Engineer: You know, in the Bible I stumbled badly in only one place, I still can't understand.

Writer: Only in one place? Lucky! In which?

Engineer: The Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus instructed the twelve disciples. I will read straight out: “Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me." How did it happen? Isn't the family the cradle of love, isn't it in the family that we learn to love from our first breath? How can you love someone more than your parents?

Writer: I'll try to explain how I personally understand this. Remember we talked about human values? About their hierarchy. That one thing is always more valuable than something else. If you make a long list of what is valuable to a person, and then ask him to start crossing out the less important in relation to the rest, then in the end one thing will remain, something most valuable. I have determined for myself that for me, as an Orthodox person, this is Love. If I put my father and mother first, then with what will I come to them? And if in my very core there is Love, like, for example, a glass of water, then every time I come to my father and mother, I am not empty, I can give them drink or warm them. The way they do it for me all my life. “God is love” – St. John the Theologian.

Consultant: Now it is difficult to find a true believer. Since you've started again yourself, tell me – do you really believe in God?

Writer: It is difficult to find, most likely because people are looking for where it is brighter, and not where they have lost. There are always a lot of people in the church on Sundays. And about faith in God… I can't say that this is faith, but rather faithfulness. It is difficult to reach infinity with the mind, but if “there” there is nothing, then “here” everything is meaningless. And reason requires meaning. I came to church as wise men – wise men from the East. Before my thirty-third birthday, I thought: my parents did not go to church, they lived in the Soviet Union, but all my other ancestors before them went to church for a thousand years, prayed to God. Were they really fools, and I am the smartest? Unlikely. So, it turns out that logically I came to this. I went into the church, began to look around, and looked closely. Ridiculously – I chose a seemingly kinder granny, plucked up courage, approached and asked: “Excuse me, please. This is my first time here, I want to receive Holy Communion. Can you tell me what book I can buy to read about it? " That grandmother showed me everything, told me. Her name was Alexandra, same as my name, God bless her! And then, when I appeared before the Lord, when I felt that all my ancestors were also standing before the icons, they were praying for each other and for my future, and for the next thousand years my children and grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren will also stand in the church and to pray, when I felt all of them nearby – both the dead, and the living, and not yet born, then I realized that I finally came home… Of course, I had to remember all the evil that I had done to people in my life. After you weep about your sins, the sins of others are no longer interesting.

Engineer: How does it all fit in with Japanese martial arts?

Writer: Apparently, I was lucky. Lucky with the entry point and teachers. When I was twenty, I read Nietzsche's “Push the Falling One” and realized that if I don’t engage in some kind of single combat, then the place for me, frail and weak, is in the dustbin of humanity. I began to search. I didn't want to hit others in the head, so I came across Aikido. They say, of course, that Aikido is the path of harmony and love, but it is better to see once than hear a hundred times. Let me draw you with your own schemes:

Writer: Basically, other martial arts are aimed at controlling the enemy by suppressing him, destroying him, and at the very least, killing. In Aikido, control is exercised through merger, that is, if at the beginning of the battle there are two alive systems 1 and 2, then during the battle a new alive system of size 1 + 2 is formed, but controlled from one center.

Engineer: It is perfectly understandable. It is love by definition! :)

Writer: And what is important, as with violin, Aikido can be practiced until old age, until the end of life. If you control only through suppression, then sooner or later you will come across a system that will suppress you. But, practicing Aikido, even in your declining years, you can unite with a train rushing towards you, taking one step at the right time in the right direction, and letting it pass, leaving the rails.

Консультантов: Don't you think that any art is about love? Be it a skater, about whom we say that he skates as if he was born in skates. Whether it is a violinist or a pianist that merges with the instrument. We always admire when a person controls something as if it were part of him.

Writer: I fully support you. With one comment: the path of true art is painstaking hard work. For example, before controlling an opponent in martial arts, you must first at least begin to control yourself. And, ending about Aikido, I like that a readiness for contact is developed, but without the desire to suppress. In the ancient Chinese treatise “Sun Tzu. The Art of War” is written that there are two tactics: attack tactics and defense tactics. At the same time, not having mastered the tactics of defense, it is foolish to move on to the tactics of attack. And I like the third tactic – non-aggression. This is not a pure defense, not a passive state, and not an aggressive attack.

Consultant: Progress is movement forward, regression is movement backward, aggression is movement towards…

Writer: And, of course, I am immensely grateful to all my teachers. Not only in martial arts, all teachers in life. This is the one who shows love more than many others! Constant surrender of yourself.

Consultant: As you said: where there is true love – there is no sacrifice! In fact, we can all be teachers to each other without even realizing it. If a person always adapts to the environment, then we must not forget that for any other person we are the very environment!

Writer: I used to think that in order to be a teacher, two conditions are necessary: to have knowledge and to be able to convey it. Because I saw a lot of people who were professionals in their field, but could not teach others. And then, at some point, I realized that I have some kind of knowledge, and I am able to transfer it, but I don’t do it – I do other things, I take care of myself and my life. Now there are three necessary conditions for being a teacher: knowledge, the ability to transfer it, and actions to transfer it.

Engineer: Love demonstrated in its interaction… I recently read with Lyudmila Petranovskaya, a child psychologist, that love is the basic instinct. If a baby has an adult who loves him, then he will have everything: and eat and not be lost. And if there is no such adult – certain death. People do not survive without each other at all. And, if you look closely at other human needs, then many of them are just a variation on the theme of uniting with something in the external environment.

Consultant: Love is an insatiable need! Or maybe, just as the whirligig needs to spin in order not to fall, so the boundaries of love need to expand in order for the Worlds to remain in balance?

Writer: Here we are philosophizing, philosophizing. And I know for sure that I will go to church on Sunday, and all the fuss will subside. All the love that I lost in a week will fill my heart again. I don’t know about other nations, but we were definitely lucky. There is where and to Whom to come and warm up.

Consultant: Come on. In the country, look, eighty percent of the baptized, and only five percent go to the church.

Writer: Tell me, if you suddenly feel bad on the plane, how many doctors do you need to be in the cabin? Trust me – one is enough. The main thing is that he really can help and, which is also important, that he (or she) responds when asked – "Is there a doctor?" So it turns out that it would be great if all the Orthodox went to church, yes, maybe it’s not bad anymore. Personally, I have already experienced early Christian maximalism, when, immediately after churching, I accused others that they wear a cross around their necks, like a gym membership ticket, but don't go to the gym themselves, so there’s no point. And is it possible to fit everyone in the church? Previously, as it was – the church was built of such a size that all Christians in the area could gather together under one roof. And now two villages of people live in one high-rise building. Is it needed to build two churches for each house?

Engineer: By the way, it seems to me that we have the only country in which churches are being built again, and not destroyed or converted into hotels or clubs.

Consultant: Please do not forget that the world is large and diverse. Writer at thirty-three became an Orthodox Christian. That is, it was your conscious choice. And now children are baptized from birth, no one asks them.

Writer: Well, first of all, I was also baptized as a child. And in fact, I regret that most of my life passed without the realization of God and the love that He gives. Especially exuberant youth, which, analyzing with hindsight, miraculously survived, walked along the edge. And secondly, it's the same as genes. The religion of the fathers, which has passed the test of evolutionary strength, is passed on to children. Yes, like the language. Will you refuse to teach children from birth the Russian language, letting them become adults and choose which language to learn. Mowgli's example shows that if a child does not talk with other people during the first years, then he will never be able to learn to speak again.

Engineer: Writer, what do you think about the miracles of the church? So everything seems to be correct: love, interaction, a large whole, living particles. But my rational brain refuses to believe in all kinds of miracles. It seems to me that these are all some kind of tricks.

Writer: What is a miracle? This is something that is not possible, but it happens. I'll speak for myself. I'll tell you a story that happened to me. It was in the Intercession Monastery, where we were standing in the human line to bow to the relics of the Matrona of Moscow. Everyone there stood for the miracle, and so did we. Desperate, we went to ask the impossible blessed Saint. And then, standing already a few meters from Matrona, an insight came to me. After all, the greatest miracle is my life – that I was born, I stand here and think about all this! What could be more wonderful than this miracle? Everything else is magic, as you said. But my life is a miracle. And the life of any other person from that moment is also a miracle for me! True, then, after a few years, I ran into another miracle unattainable to the mind, something that is impossible, but will surely happen – death. Today, as an Orthodox person, I believe in only three miracles: “that I live”, “that one day I will die” and “that later I will be resurrected and will live forever”. All these three miracles seem impossible to me, but I believe in love and every new day I take a step forward, as if I know that there is solid ground ahead.

11 Individual

Man: Father, good day! Finally I got to you.

Priest: Good day, dear! Have you arrived with your son?

Man: Yes, he fell asleep in the wheelchair while walking. As you were transferred to a new church, I was still going to come, but then one thing, then another. It seems to be not far, but while waiting for the right moment – almost a year has passed. But I go to our church almost every Sunday, I confess, I receive communion.

Priest: It's good.

Man: I have come … with a purpose. I have never asked for a blessing. But I am going to write a book, and I feel that I must take a blessing for this.

Priest: What will the book be about?

Man: About love. You see, my first education was in applied math, programming. Then I became an automation engineer. I got carried away with the theory of management, now I am professionally engaged in this in a large international company. I also practice Japanese martial arts. And everywhere I see the same principles, everywhere I see love. I even came up with a definition: "Love is a property of all alive things, demonstrated in its interaction with another essence as a single whole with itself." I want to write about it, share my personal experience, and show that love is everywhere. Show it to other people, young people.

Priest: Interesting. Yes. I, too, when I was teaching, told students about Suvorov, Alexander Vasilyevich. Throughout his career, he did not lose a single battle, he believed in God, won with God and Russian heroic soldiers. Sometimes it is even better – not head-on, but like this, using examples about God and Love to speak, especially with young people.

Man: Thank you, father. Bless me for writing a book!

Priest: Write, dear, with God blessing!

12 Management for Dummies 2

Consultant: Many believe that humans are the pinnacle of evolution, the “crown of creation”.

Engineer: Don't you think so? Even if we accept that all life on Earth is still the same first living cell, which has grown, transforming the inorganic around itself, and has become more complex, releasing autonomous but connected living elements within itself, even if you think so, a person still has a special role, function. If we agree that one of the laws of the universe is a constant increase in love, as an interaction with other essences within a single whole, then a person is an undoubted leader! Humans connected everything, climbed into all corners, cognized and continues to cognize all living and nonliving from the microcosm to the macrocosm.

Consultant: I'm not even going to argue with that, I completely agree. But what I want to say. I want to say that evolution did not stop at the moment of human creation. Has man developed greatly over the historical period that we know? It practically remains the same, but the organization of people is developing. Tribe, village, cities, countries, empires. The boundaries of "new living wholes" were constantly expanding. The division of labor between the woman keeping the hearth in the cave and the man hunting in the vicinity has evolved into a world division of labor within a single global economy. To be clear: division of labor, not as a segregation, but as a specialization that complicates the internal organization and external efficiency of the general whole. Thus, organizational development is the next, large stage of evolution.

Writer: I feel that when you say “evolution” – this is no longer the old approach, when everything was accidentally formed and survived, but more about the fact that the World is an oak tree that grew out of an acorn. That is, there are also the laws of development and a certain initial project of development enveloped at the foundation of life. Am I right?

Consultant: I'll tell you more. I don’t understand yet how, but from the very beginning a human and his special role were included in this development project.

Engineer: A person is made up of cells, and organizations are made up of people?

Consultant: To put it very roughly, yes. But after all, eighty kilograms of minced meat can be equated to a person in terms of weight and number of cells, although we understand that the comparison is inadequate. Cells form tissues, tissues form organs, organs interact within systems and subsystems within the body. You know, it is fashionable now to talk about “company DNA”. Someone has innovation in DNA, someone has security, and so on. But the code cannot be passed just like that, without a nutrient medium and a protective shell of a living cell. I sincerely believe that a cell of an organization is not a person, but a small group of people who temporarily, shortly or for a long time, gather to reach common objectives.

Engineer: The family – a social cell!

Consultant: In the world of organizational management, I like the term “small project team” more. Here's the evolution of organizations:

Consultant: In the beginning there was a master who knew everything, and apprentices who helped him. Then the specialization of labor began, departments and subdivisions appeared in organizations, and the foreman turned into a manager. Specialization allowed the accumulation of different competencies, and this difference gradually began to lead to the loss of a common language. The whole was seen only from the position of top management, to which all information flows naturally began to direct. To make the organization more autonomous, flexible and quick in responding to requests from the external environment, progressive companies began to introduce project management – a matrix organizational structure. This is when several people from different departments gather for a task, and the project itself permeates all departments of the company, taking resources from there to achieve a result. On standard orders that have not changed for decades, this may be necessary, but in fact – this economic structure is in the past. The speeds are growing, you need to be as flexible as possible and use the internal environment of the organization as quickly and efficiently as possible to maintain balance with the external environment.

Writer: All your newfangled project teams have already been brought to life by Anton Makarenko in the twenties of the XX century!

Consultant: I know. "The Pedagogical Poem" is the favorite book of Ichak Adizes. In any case, as we said in mathematics, it is necessary, but not enough. No matter how well you use the horse, cars have replaced it. If you want to live, you need to constantly change. Change management is now a powerful trend that many methodologists are feeding on. So, some bright minds suggested: let's divide the project teams into those that support current processes (companies that supply products and services to customers today) and those project teams that will focus exclusively on changes. Run teams and Change teams. There are always urgent tasks, and development tasks are always postponed as the last priority. At the same time, if there are difficulties in the current activities of the organization, then all the energy is spent on solving them, and changes are postponed to “never”. Therefore, there is a lot of sense in dividing into teams that simultaneously are engaged in supporting the business and its development. Changes have a chance to be realized, and the organization has a chance to break out of the vicious circle of solving yesterday's problems today.

Engineer: Wait. It turns out that if earlier, and so, project teams fought for resources with departments and divisions of the linear structure, now the struggle for resources will also occur between project teams..

Consultant: I will say more. It's not even a fight, it's a real war! Because the “Run” team needs nothing to change in order to “stamp” the result that feeds the organization today. And the “Change” team's main task is to change this so that the company stays on the market and has something to eat tomorrow, when the world around us changes. The top management deals with the resolution of contradictions; this is now its main function – the balance of functioning and development. And the more such controlled contradictions, the more stable the organization on its boundaries in the rapidly changing modern world.

Engineer: But this is homeostasis in its purest form! Self-regulation, the ability of an open system to maintain the constancy of its internal state through coordinated reactions aimed at maintaining dynamic balance. Negative feedback loops try to minimize deviations from the norm (maintaining body temperature, blood glucose levels, blood pressure, and so on), while positive feedback loops amplify changes as soon as they begin (blood clotting, events in the body at birth, and so on). Moreover, all feedback loops (both negative and positive) are active at the same time and compete.

Consultant: Have you noticed that we know more about negative feedback loops, and that they mostly work under normal conditions. But if there is some kind of crisis, then the amplifiers of change "shoot out"!

Engineer: Generally, changes occur constantly for any organism. Both internal and external changes. With different speeds. It seems to me that a crisis is when internal changes do not have time to synchronize with external changes.

Writer: But, if you go back for a moment to an individual person, different people have different temperaments. Someone is quick from birth, someone is slower. It turns out that if external events, common to everyone, change slowly – comfortably for one, and if they change quickly, then for others, and the first becomes uncomfortable?

Consultant: That is why I prefer teams consisting of different people. In one situation, one goes to the boundary of the team with the external environment, in another situation – another member of the team. Even if one will work hard around the clock, while the other will have only a “minute of glory”. The interests of the whole take precedence over the interests of the subsystems living within.

Engineer: Did you know that Pavlov in his experimental dogs revealed the same four main types of character as Hippocrates and Galen?

Consultant: Leave me the third column, I will fill the types of Adizes leaders.

Writer: Do you propose to form teams of four people, one of each type?

Consultant: This would be a simple solution, but unfortunately, or fortunately, this is not possible. Firstly, the percentage of types in the population is different, and secondly, it is unlikely that a pure type can be found. Each time – this is some kind of combination, which also changes over time, but, however, in many cases, you can distinguish the dominant facet. But you are right, it is better to select the team so that there are no obvious gaps.

Writer: It's strange somehow. When you want to gather a group of like-minded people, I think you need to listen to your heart. And you propose to start with a questionnaire to find out the psychological types. Also try to memorize all these names. It turns out somehow unnatural.

Consultant: I don’t know about the heart, but with emotional intelligence you will most likely pick up your own kind in spirit and make a big mistake. A strong team needs different members. Well, that is, in a simple way, the one who covers up your weakness in a critical situation with his strength, will most likely annoy you under normal conditions. The converse is also true. But for a stable living whole, you need both of you, different. The bones must be hard and the bottom soft!

Engineer: Nowadays there is a lot of talk about two brains. The neocortex is a new brain and a reptilian brain, an older formation, the limbic system. The first is rational, the second is emotional. And here and there – gray matter (concentration of bodies of nerve cells), and in both – intelligence. It's just that the “old brain” regulates the most ancient systems: respiration, heartbeat, hormonal reactions. So, when they talk about the mind and heart, they are most likely talking about a “new” (by evolutionary standards) and “ancient” brain. The “ancient” brain is fast, controls all basic instincts and is directly connected with the heart, but thanks to the neocortex, a person can make plans for the future. This is in a nutshell, of course.

Consultant: If there are two brains, then just four options are obtained in combinations. The brain cannot be absent at all, so if we take 0 – weak, 1 – strong, then we have four types (new brain – ancient brain): 0-1, 1-0, 1-1, 0-0.

Writer: Like the four types of blood: 0, A, B, AB.

Consultant: Do you want me to tell you such a typification of characters that you will never forget it and will easily apply it without any questioning? Own development. There are also four types:

Engineer: Bicycles?

Consultant: Yes, exactly. They differ in speed, attitude towards the person with whom they interact, and so on. The first type (choleric, entrepreneur) is a unicycle. Like in a circus. Very fast, but there is no particular purpose. Constantly in motion, at any second it can change direction to any of three hundred and sixty degrees. If you ask about the risks for a person sitting on it, the answer from a one-wheeler will be – “I don’t know what risks are, but it will definitely be fun!”

Engineer: A two-wheeled one?

Consultant: You should like it. The second type (sanguine, producer) is a two-wheeled bicycle. This is a bicycle for an adult who knows and achieves his goals. He has seven speeds, foot and hand brake, flashlight and pump. He cannot move backward, only forward. If you stop it, then it will fall either to the left or to the right, unlike a one-wheeled one, which, when stopped, can fall in any direction.

Engineer: A three-wheeled?

Consultant: The third type (melancholic, administrator) is a tricycle, a children's bicycle. This one can move both forward and backward. Only slowly, and it is better not to move at all, it is safer for everyone. Very stable, where you put it, it will stand there. If an adult sits on it, it will be uncomfortable: the knees will be at the level of the head, it will take a huge amount of energy and strength to overcome a short distance. But claims will not be accepted, because “everything was done correctly, according to Standard”.

Writer: And what about the four-wheel?

Consultant: My favorite. The fourth type (phlegmatic, integrator) is a four-wheeled bicycle. In fact, it is very similar to a two-wheeled one, except that usually two more small wheels are attached to its rear wheel for stability. Such a bicycle is bought for a child after a three-wheeled one so that he learns to maintain balance on his own and then switches to a two-wheeled adult bicycle. The four-wheeled bicycle grows with the child: the seat and handlebars rise, when necessary, additional wheels are detached. And when the child is transferred to a real two-wheeled bicycle, additional wheels are again fastened to the four-wheeled bicycle and handed over to the new child for training.

Engineer: Yes, it's really easy to remember. I immediately remembered several one-wheeled vehicles that I had encountered in my life…

Writer: Of course you remembered, unicycles annoy many!

Consultant: Yeah, especially four-wheelers! The main thing you remember is that everyone is needed for a common cause. How is there in the definition of love: to interact as a whole with itself. You protect – you love, you endure – you also love. By the way, as an Orthodox person, how do you fight with condemnation? After all, it is at the level of a reflex that it is laid down – to evaluate another person: dangerous – not dangerous. This is often far from reality. How many times have I condemned in my life, so many times have I made mistakes.

Writer: I came up with a trick with strangers. As soon as my gaze lingers on someone and I feel that I’m going to start putting up labels, I immediately ask myself the question – “how can I help this person?” In ninety-five percent of cases – nothing. In four percent of cases, a little help is needed – I try to help right away. It is more difficult with the last percent, when help is really needed, but you do not have the strength and ability to help. But the strength and capabilities could have been enough, if somewhere in the past I was not lazy, if I tried harder. It motivates you to be bigger and stronger, not for yourself, to help when someone really needs it from you.

Consultant: You said "with strangers." And with friends in a different way?

Writer: Believe it or not, I started to apply the Engineer's love formula with my friends and relatives! I think something about a person, or I want to say or do something and immediately ask myself inside – "How much love is there on a scale from zero to ten?" If someone is a stranger to me – zero, if there is something in common that unites us – already five or six. If a wife or children, then there should be a nine or ten, but in fact – often much lower. So I try to correct myself immediately so as to raise the degree of love by at least a couple of points. Very often I just don’t do what I wanted to do, or don’t say what I wanted to say. Truth spoken without love is a lie…

Consultant: And we are just conducting a philosophical search for truth with love and about love! I wanted to ask you both one more question before we part ways today.

Writer: Give your question.

Consultant: I have a work business card. Everything is as it should be: full name, company name and position, address, phone number. And so I wondered, if I had not a work card, but a personal card, what would be written on it? Who am I really in life?

Engineer: It is hard to say in one word…

Consultant: You can not in one word.

Writer: Why, I can do it in one. So it will be written for me – "The Writer".

Engineer: I came up with it too. Write “Russian” on my personal card!

Consultant: And for some reason I remember the phrase of Kurt Lewin "There is nothing more practical than a good theory." I suggest not to interrupt our philosophical conversations, it seems to me that I am becoming myself. Perhaps on my personal card I will write – "Applied Philosopher"…

Engineer: By the way, you once asked to collect ten books from each of us and make a general list. Task is done:

1. The Bible

2. Alexei Ukhtomsky. Dominant

3. Pyotr Anokhin. Philosophical aspects of the theory of functional systems

4. Ivan Pavlov. On the Mind in General and the Russian One in Particular

5. Lev Vygotsky. Educational Psychology

6. Norbert Wiener. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

7. Andrey Kurpatov. Trinity. Be more than yourself

8. Georgy Shchedrovitsky. Organizational thinking

9. Alexei Gastev. How to Work

10. Anton Makarenko. The Pedagogical Poem

11. Ichak Adizes. Mastering Change

12. Simon Sinek. Start with Why

13. Barbara Minto. The pyramid principle

14. Kurt Lewin. Field theory in social science

15. Edwin C. Nevis. Organizational Consulting: A Gestalt Approach

16. Arnold Beisser. Paradoxical Theory of Change

17. Serge Ginger. Gestalt Therapy: The Art of Contact

18. Andrey Teslinov. Homeostatics: Harmony in the Interplay of Contradictions

19. Stephen Hawking. A brief history of time

20. Eric Schmidt. The New Digital Age

21. Frederic Laloux. Reinventing Organizations

22. Simon Dolan. Coaching By Values

23. David Allen. Getting Things Done

24. Daniel Goleman. Emotional Intelligence

25. Lyudmila Petranovskaya. Secret support: affection in the life of a child

26. Shinichi Suzuki. Nurtured by Love: The Classic Approach to Talent Education

27. Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov

28. Alexander Suvorov. The Science of Victory

29. Sun Tzu. The Art of War

30. Erich Fromm. Art of Loving

Consultant: Thank you.

Writer: See you again, my friends!