• 

EMBODIMENT: PARTICIPATORY WEBBING 

by 

LARA JULIANN UTMAN 

A THESIS 

Presented to the Environmental Studies Program 
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon 

in partial fulfillment of the requirements 
for the degree of 

M aster of Science 

December 2003 



"Embodiment: Participatory Webbing,'· a thesis prepared by L ara Juliann Urman in 

partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Science degree in the 

Environmental Studies Program. This thesis has been approved and accepted by: 

r , , Chair of the Examining Committee 

I 

Commitlee in Charge: 

Accepted by: 

Dean of the Graduate School 

Dr. Suzanne Clark, Chair 
Dr. Dennis Todd 

II 



111 

Lara Juliann Utman 

An Abstract of the Thesis of 

for the degree of Master of Science 

in the Environmental Studies Program to be taken December 2003 

T itle: EMBODIME T: PARTICIPAT ORY WEBBING 

Approved: 

Embodiment may be defined as the practice of recognizing that while we might 

think we exist within our bodies, we fundamental ly ex ist as our bodies. Our thoughts and 

actions become our bodies and from thi s our bodily choices influence and transform the 

ecological systems of the planet that sustains us. Since the Western world embraced 

Descanes' mind-bo<.ly split, we have practiced th is disconnect, which no longer serves to 

sustain our culture. 

Stories w ithin th is thesis encourage and al low readers to remember that our 

physical structures, ecological systems, and language that we use are created and shaped 

from this primary connection of mind and body. ft provides an opportunity to participate in 

this way of understanding and illustrates other ways of seeing Western culture. T he thesis 

also explores environmental awareness within discipl ines, establishes relationships across 

disciplines, and insists on structural integrity at the most local of levels: our bodies. 



CURRICULUM VITAE 

NAME OF AUTHOR: Lara Juliann Utman 

PLACE OF BIRTH: Flemington, New Jersey 

DATE OF BIRTH: March 15, 1973 

GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: 

University of Oregon 
Reed College 
Pomona College 

DEGREES AWARDED: 

Master of Science, 2003, University of Oregon 
Bachelors of Arts in Literature, 1995, Pomona College 

AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: 

Interdisciplinary dialogue 
Ecophenomenology 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: 

Program Director, Literary Arts, Inc. , 1997-200 I 
Produced the Portland Arts & Lectures Series, Poetry in Motion © , 
Oregon Book Awards Author Tour. 

Tech Level I , Bureau of Environmental Services - C ity of Portland, 1996-1997 
Downspout disconnection program. 

Volunteer, AmeriCorps - EnviroCorps, 1995- 1996 
National service, environmental restoration work. 

IV 



V 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Primary thanks for facilitating and enabling this M aster's thesis go both to the staff and 

faculty and fel low students of the Environmental Studies Department at the University of 

Oregon and to my advisors: Suzanne Clark in the English Department, Dennis Todd in 

Honors College, and Peter Wetherwax in the Biology Department. I deeply appreciate my 

family for their patience and good humor throughout the study: arada Golden, Patricia 

Reilly, Courtney Utman, and Daniel Utman, as well as all the friends who serve as my family 

in all the places that I have conducted th is research. Next on the list of acknowledgements are 

the places themselves that contributed to my understanding of embodiment: especially the 

multifarious greens, blues, and browns of Oregon. California, New Jersey and Ecuador; the 

hundreds of types of trees, bugs, soils, animals, birds, reptiles, plants and flowers that 

generated my inter-understandings and my embodied relationing. Also, Earth's basic systems 

of air conditioning, water purification, food growing, and rotation/orbit for sunrises, sunsets, 

and seasons that kept me alive over the last two years of th is research. Finally, I would like to 

thank my Earthbodymind for making this study possible. 



VI 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. PREFACE: EMBODIED SAPIENS ........ .. .. .................................. ................ l 

II. INTRODUCTION: WEBBED BODYING AS SCALE ................... .... ...... 3 

ID. CHAPTER l : PHYSICAL ECOLOGY. LOCATING THE WEBBING . 8 

Spider "Talk" ..................... ........................... ....... ...... ..... ....... .. .................. 9 
How Spiders Live Communally: One Species of Social Spiders at 

Tiputini Biodiversity Station, Ecuador ........ .............................. 11 
Introduction ................................................................................ .... .... 12 
Materials and Methods .............................. .... .... ...... ..... ....................... 13 
Description of Behaviors ..... .. ........... .................................................. 13 

Web Repair ............................................... .............................. 14 
Hunting ................ ............... ... .... ............ .... .......... ... ........ ......... 14 
Feeding ............. .... .. .... .......... .. ... ...... ......... ............. ..... ............. 14 

Results ..................................................... ......................................... ... 14 
Discussion ................................... .... ............. ........... ......... ..... ...... ...... ... 15 

IV. CHAPTER 2: POLITICAL ECOLOGY, TRANSITION TO 
WEBBED I-fUMANS ... ........ .............................................. ..... ..... ........ 18 

Systems Theory ...................... ............ ............... ...................................... 2 1 
The Mystery Ride ...... .. ............................................................... ...... ....... 27 
Collective Action and Social Change ... .................................................. 29 
Relativity Embodied .... ...... ....................................................................... 31 
Critical Mass ................. .... ......................................... ... ....... ........... .......... 32 
Participation as Webbing ...................... ........ ............................... ..... ....... 36 
Mobilized Mass ........... ................................................................ ...... ....... 38 
Embodied Metabolism .................................................. .... ... ............. ..... .. 42 
Gaia Eats ........................ ...... ..... ....... ............... .................. ........ ... ............. 44 
Darwin's Choice ................... ................................................. .... ....... ........ 46 

V. CHAPTER 3: PERSONAL ECOLOGY, LOCATING THE SELF ..... .... 50 

Reduced Embodiment ... ....... .... .. .... .... ......... ......... ..... ...... .... ..... .. ...... ....... 55 
Disembodied Mind, Embodied Realism .. .. .............................. .............. . 57 
Modernist-I, Postmodern-We ............................. .................................... 59 
Drawn Meaning .... ...... ... .... ....... .. ........ .. ... ................................................. 6 1 



VI I 

Chapter Page 

Virtuous Vulnerabi lity ............................................................................. 63 
Intimate Real ity ........................................................................... ............. 65 
Weaving the Self .................... ......... .. .. ..................................................... 67 
Our Maps Will Eat Us ............................................................. .. ............... 69 

VI. CHAPTER 4: PHILOSOPHICAL ECOLOGY, LIVING AN 
EMBODIED PHILOSOPHY ............................................................... 73 

Wild Paradox ........................................................................................... 75 
Interrogation as Invocation, Body as Intuitive Prayer ..................... ........ 79 
Ontology of the Bodymind ...................................................................... 85 
Formal Spaces, Unspoken Laws .............................................................. 92 
Chiasm, Being T ime ....................................................................... .. ..... .. . 96 
Experiencing Living .............................................................................. . 101 

VII. CONCLUSIONS: PARTICIPATORY WEBBING ............. ..... ... ........ I 04 

vm. EPILOGUE .......... ..... ........ ....................... ............. ............... ................... I I 0 

LITERATURE CITED .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . .. . . .. .. .. . .. . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . . .. . .. .. I I I 



LIST OFT ABLES 

Table Page 

I. D aily Behavior: Table 1.. ......................................... ..................... .. .... ........... 15 



Preface: Embodied Sapiens 

"Great discoveries have always been made at the intersections of disciplines. 

Reading Malthus, Charles Darwin was looking at demography; he was also looking at 

the works of an economist, Adam Smith-quite different-and ar the works of the Belgian 

statistician Adolphe Quetelet. And then, out came the idea-natural selection. There are 

many examples of people working cu intersections, simply to get a different perspective. 

It's like getting in a boat and traveling to the other side of a river and looking to see what 

it's like from there. I keep telling my students they've got to be open and try to learn 

about different things. I want them to have more than one kind of skill. I firmly believe in 

interdisciplinary work, and that's where all the excitement lies" - Elisabeth Vrba, 

Professor of paleontology and biology at Yale University; Biology 1999: 488). 

In 1957, K arl R. Popper, one of the early leaders in the field of ecology, presented 

"Philosophy of Science: A Personal Report" to colleagues at an interdiscipl inary 

conference. He opened his talk with the following: "Since the autumn of 1919 when I 

first began to grapple with the problem, 'When should a theory be ranked as scientific?' 

Or, ' Is there a criterion of the sc ientific character or status of a theory?' .. . I w ished to 

distinguish between science and pseudoscience; knowing very wel l that science often 

errs, and that pseudoscience may happen to stumble upon the truth .... I knew, of course, 

what was the most widely accepted answer to my problem: that science is distinguished 

from pseudo-science .. . by its empirical method; that it is essential ly inductive, proceeding 

from observation to experiment" (Popper 1957: 255). Popper believed that a rigorous 

inductive method could be used to explore questions in a variety of disciplines. 

Historically at th is time debates over what constituted solid scientific inquiry were even 

more rampant than today, although within academic fields these questions conti nue. 

While sc ience has become more technologically proficient, observation, experimentation 

and induction continue to play a significant role in the way the species human attempts to 

understand the world within which we live. 



2 

Methods for researching within interdisciplinary work are apt to be challenging. 

In order to reduce confus ion as to the points this paper hopes to make and methods it 

uses, the following quote applies. " I n applying a method, we need to be as sure as we can 

that the method itsel f does not either determine the outcome in advance of the empirical 

inquiry or artificially skew it. A common method for achieving this, especially in the 

studies we will be discussing, is to seek converging evidence using the broadest available 

range of different methodologies. Ideally, the skewing effects of any one method w ill be 

canceled out by the other methods. The more sources of evidence we have, the more 

likely this is to happen" (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 79). According to Lakoff and 

Johnson, using multiple methods of inquiry helps limit skewi ng from subjectivity and 

observation. While this work appl ies observation and general research techniques for the 

most part, its mul ti-disc iplinary perspective causes the information to be viewed across 

traditional boundaries of language and procedure. Attempts have been made to provide 

readers with the clearest ways of stating the points while still pushing the limits of 

language towards a more ecologically friendly way of writing. 

In the following thesis, I focus on the experience of embodiment at both the 

personal and the political scales. By investigating the use of language across disciplines 

as it serves to shape our stories, I hope to increase awareness about our role in creating 

the stories. By recognizing the extent to which our personal participation webs the world, 

I propose that our embodied experiences not only web our environment but also create 

the world we live within. Through personal participation in complex community systems, 

both social and ecological, our webbing embodies our selves. 



Introduction: Webbed Bodying, Body as Scale 

You don' t need to leave your room. 
Remain sitting at your table and l isten. 

Don' t even l isten, simply wait. 
Be quite still and soli tary. 

The world will freely offer itself to you. 
To be unmasked, it has no choice. 
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet. 

- Franz Kafka 

You don' t need ro leave your room. 
Room leaves you, bodyou sitting, listening. 

Remaining. 
Still- ly, never a- lone. 

T he world might offer itself for a price, -
but Earth unmasks yourbody el f to herself, freely. 

Y ouEarth roll in ecstasy, dirting your selves. 
-Embodying 

3 

You are your body. There is no way around it. Your lungs breathe you, your heart 

pumps you blood that also is you. Your stomach digests you the food that is you, 

nutrients that are you because they are integrated into the cel ls that you are. New eel Is re­

become you, replacing old cellular ti ssue w ith replicated information. W hile you might 

spend time meditating on the transcendental nature of li ving, you do it as your body. 

Y our thoughts shape you and become the you that you think you want to be, 

al lowing you to practice nearly anything that ex ists in the physical plane around you. 

Thoughts lead us on into how we could live. In order to become this idea of you, you 

practice it in your thoughts and in your actions: a teacher, a mother or father, dancer, 

lawyer, musician, gardener, lover, farmer. Y ou practice being what represents, what is 

those things as you notice others being them. Y ou replicate the information that those 

ways represent to you, and you become their way and they become your way of being 

them as well. 



4 

We might think or feel as though we exist within our bodies, but in this time and 

place we actually exist our bodies. We live in them, but really we live them, because we­

our bodies connect the world around us, being the world. We are taught that we are born 

"within" our bodies, and spend our lives waking and sleeping " in" them, conscious and 

unconscious of the presence of our bodies in the world. We have become used to thinking 

about ourselves as "connected to" our bodies. connected to the world " through" our 

bodies, but not wholly connected, as though we were able to float within our physical 

form like oil floats on water. This "partial" connection allows us to always remain 

essentially reserved in relation to the world around us. This is the story we've been 

taught, the shaping story for our existence. 

How we tell the story of existence within our bodies affects how we relate to the 

world we live within. How we tell the story of our world affects how we make decisions 

that shape our world. In Western culture, some of the means and methods of telling our 

stories have been classified by historical directives such as those within institutions of a 

university, a religion, a political or an economic sphere. Ln the story of the Western world 

for example, the Judea-Christian conception of the word " world" has been presented as 

something that we should be in but not of; in order to maintain the pattern of the cu lture. 

Were we to conceive of "world" as something we are, a process perhaps, maybe then we 

would think, act, and be our Western culture differently. The language that we use to 

shape our stories is our tool for creating cultural relationships within the world, and 

within the Earth that mothers us. 

Our storytelling tools also come from cultural mores that are passed down and 

outlast institutions, from communities and ways of being that ex ist in deeper time than 

we recognize. When we become conscious of the tools we use to shape our stories, we 

release ourselves from habits of telling stories that shape the world in ways we would 

prefer to change, we would prefer to differ by being different. 

In respect of the Cartesian world view that has in formed most Western institutions 

and long term cultural and organizational decisions, we have arri ved at a moment of 

change. Multiple factors prompt this change, which has been arriving now for nearly half 



a century. Historically, the change arrives slowly because inscription of its processes 

takes longer than the change takes to occur, but physically the change is already upon us 

and is already motivating our hearts that pump our blood. How can we describe th is 

change? In words, the illustration looks something like this. 

Our bodies are not vehicles we drive, we are our bodies. Our bodies embody our 

thoughts, our actions, our conscious and unconscious being; we embody our bodies. We 

are enter- and inter-embodied creatures, both stretching out to touch and opening up in 

order to allow. In our relations with the world al low us to survi ve, and fundamentally we 

are the very world around us, as it is us. Instead of thinking of these concepts as dual, 

subject and object, outer and inner, acting in relationship with something, we must 

recognize another deep shi ft in how we envision our embodied presence. We exist as 

complex processes, embody-ing. 

5 

Were we to name ourselves in grammar, we would be gerunds. We tel l ourselves 

that we are individual nouns who do or be, but in our experience, we emprocess reality; 

we are emprocessing we's, or we beings. lnstead of "being in relationship w i th the 

Earth": we would describe our relationship as, Earth we relarioning. Instead of being the 

center of the picture, we would, like a Japanese landscape painting, be very small and off 

to the side, under a tree or crossing a bridge, barely seen from afar. This fundamental 

shift in language allows us the potential to recreate our self-perception and from that our 

shaping of the world, which exists within us and within which we exist, enter-ex isting, 

co-creating. 

Language, for our cultural world, is l ike the DNA of our cel lu lar matter. Our 

cultural world is like the DNA for replicating the species human to itself in the W orld. 

When our DNA does not repl icate wel l , wc break clown cel lularl y. When our language 

does not repl icate well, our cultural World breaks down. Our language also affects the 

integrity of our Earth, from which the World draws its energy. Language reflects the 

integrity of our Earth relationship, and when we do not uphold in language respect and 

integrity in relation with the Earth, our species and many others break down. Our culture, 

Western culture, our language, Western language, our thoughts, Western thoughts, our 



actions, Western actions, are largely the culprit. Western world-culture is strong and 

individualistic, competitive and exploitative, unconscious and destructive to our place 

within Earth's relationing. 

6 

Based on how we learn our embodied relationing, the world-culture schools us in 

its embodiment. While this sentence is circular, it shows us the style of our existence, and 

it does leave many spaces for tiny changes, spaces for sh i fts in our learning and in the 

world's body. These spaces are created when we recognize the consciousness involved in 

listening and watching and translating what we notice into patterns of being and action 

that reflect what we notice. The more we notice, the more potential there is for changing 

how we act in response to what we notice. Within our bodies we tell the story of Us to 

ourselves, through means that we learn from others, and from creative and imaginative 

ways of describing the world on our own. 

Our culture, our thoughts, actions and choices, our patterns for organizing and 

replicating ourselves to ourselves, are shifting and need to continue shifting, fast. The 

stories that follow observe the old rules of languaging, and describe old ways of knowing, 

in hopes that these descriptions will seem archaic and outmoded. Tn keeping with the 

institution of the university, for which this work has been written, the format is 

constrained by Western modes of being and shaped by Western metaphors. While the 

work wi l l not be able to leave the reader completely embodied (for the act of reading 

itself is an act of disembodiment, requiring a suspension of disbelief to keep you in that 

chair and concentrating), the focus here is to tell a story of other ways of understanding 

Western culture itself, and offer the reader an opportunity to practice participation in this 

way of understanding. 

Chapter One explores the physical and ecological stories that science has 

provided us along our quest for understanding wholeness in the environment by which 

we are configured. Chapter One includes a formal presentation and scientific analysis of 

one social, community web-building species of spider in order that we may see in basic 

terms the process by which science hopes to achieve understanding and clarity about the 

world around us. It also introduces the ideas of systems theory and relates their 



7 

organizational force to the organization of every system's autopoietic nature. Patterns we 

explore in the natural world provide humans with models for conscious patterning in the 

cul tural world. "By consciousness we mean subjective awareness, or the abil ity to be 

aware of and make conscious judgments about the environment" (Terry Dawson, Biology 

1999: 989) . This chapter offers ideas, mental patterns and metaphors for community 

application. 

Chapter Two illustrates complex patterns that fundamental ly organize social 

relations by looking in depth at the story of Critical Mass, the collective bicycle action 

that began in San Francisco and has spread throughout the world. This recent movement 

towards a number of social, pol itical and environmental changes allows us to understand 

some of the fundamentals existing within social bodies that motivate and create col lective 

action. Chapter Two assists us in understanding that patterns we participate in shape the 

world we l ive within, so that we may begin to pattern wholeness and health in dai ly 

choices, creating those fundamentals with wider communities in which we participate. 

The last chapter, Chapter Three, opens with my experiences of collective, 

community action, based within the cultural system of dance. By understanding 

fundamental embodiment on a personal level, we become able to understand the play of 

physical, social, and philosophical conditioning that shape every decision we make. 

Beginning with our bodies we move outward in concentric circles of experience, 

developing our concept of self and applying that to our communities. Ultimately, our 

individual and collective choices wi ll continue to position our evolution as a species in 

community with all of the other species and natural forces with which we are integrated. 

Embodied, we have been given the opportunity to participate. Participating, we embody 

the Earth. Our process is the product, Earth we embodying. 



Chapter 1: Physical Ecology. Locating the Webbing 

A noiseless patient spider, 
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, 
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, 
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, 
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. 

And you O my soul where you stand, 
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, 
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, 
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, 
Ti ll the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, 0 my soul. 

- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Crass 

8 

Have you ever watched a spider build its web? Have you sat unti l time goes into 

timelessness on the side of a log or in a garden or on a park bench near a spider bush and 

watched? The spider climbs up the side of a tree to attach its anchor link of its web, spins 

itself down the trunk of the tree and moves to the opposing side of its chosen space, 

attaching its second link of web. As it continues the process of pulling silken molecules 

of webbing out of its spinnerets, from the back end of its own abdomen, you begin to 

sense the proportions of its daily task of web spinning for food col lection. Your mind 

goes into a zone of wonder and if you pul l yoursel f away from th is wonder you may also 

feel disbelief that you are watching something so gigantic in relation to a creature so tiny. 

The spider persists and if it is a solitary spider it takes hours to pull silk into its 

place, forming its attachments in patterns of well -recognized orbs, half-orbs and partial 

orbs, into irregular tents, crafty drop nets, or into large complexes of silk, into tunnels and 

thick laces that tempt the prey. Other spiders work together to spin webs, catching and 

killing food as a group and maintaining the spider community wi th ru les j ust as defined 

as our own social rules. Spiders web their world elegantly and deftly, avoiding attention 

by most often spinning at dusk or into the evening so that at dawn they wil l be ready to 



9 

greet food with silk and quick toxin in order to paralyze and consume their prey. Because 

of the beauty, del icate strength, and ferocity spiders exhibit, they provide us with an 

interesting combination of concepts about how l i Fe unfolds towards continuation. 

A spider cannot be a mere automaton in the style of Descartes because of the 

infinity of potential variables that must be cons idered to simply accomplish the building 

of a web on a stormy night. Translate this into the world of 3-0 model ing for example -

if the spider's every motion had to potential ly account for every possible angle of 

movement once subjected to variable wind speed, or the weight of every drop of water 

that had fallen on her web creation (l ike an infinite number of " if' statements) this would 

be a huge amount of data, requiring at the very least a bigger processi ng area in the brain. 

Instead we don't know how this is possible, for the same web design to be created under 

a myriad of conditions, which for us in our rational know-it-all mechanistic world view is 

tantamount to magic. 

It could suggest that there are other ways of knowing, that the human field of 

perception is not the be-al l end-al l of information procurement. It could also suggest, as 

David Abram does in The Spell of the Sensuous, that humans are perceptual agents of the 

natural world set up to receive and transmit knowledge of a certain genre. Perhaps we 

operate on only one frequency of many, and would be better off recognizing the 

importance of other frequencies of l ife in deference to our own ignorance of how the 

complex magic that surrounds us actually functions as a whole. W ithout ful l knowledge 

of the whole, we wil l continue to reproduce partial patterns as we weave our web for 

catching life, weakening the wholeness as just one of many species. 

Spider "Talk" 

About 34,000 different species of spiders l ive in environments all over the Earth. 

They range in size from 2mm to 90mm in length, and their bodies are divided into two 

parts, the thorax and the abdomen. Spiders have eight walking legs, a pair of biting 

chelicerae, and two pedipalps in front of their walking legs, bringing the total extremities to 



twelve. Spider communication has evolved to a variety of noticeable methods, which they 

carry out in a variety of social arrangements (K oomans et al. I 974: 64). 

Communication evolves as species push established interactions toward the 

boundaries of other communicatory messages, for example utilizing one message for both 

sustenance and for mating. One example of complex messages may be noticed in the poses 

of Salticidae and Lycosidae (K oomans et al. I 974: 64). Their courtship positions often 

evolve from predatory poses; they use the same movements Lo both threaten insects and 

attract mates. Spiders that have emerged more recently have an increased variety of 

courting and hunting signals. As spiders evolve their messages vary both qualitati vely and 

quantitatively; some affective factors inc lude age, physiological state, and past experience. 

Subsocial spiders came earlier than social spiders, who sometimes weave large joint 

webs and attack caught prey together, according to Krafft. Mutual tolerance among spiders 

leads them to become socialized, the theory being that young who are encouraged to linger 

with the nu1turing spider(s) build social tolerance. Mutual tolerance fosters vibratory 

communication between spiders of the same family, and among species like Agelena 

consociate and Stegodyphus sarasin.orum, fami ly recognition has been documented to be 

reinforced using chemical signals. Another factor that may be necessary for spiders to 

become socialized and mutually tolerant is an abundance of prey. When food sources are 

consistentl y abundant and foraging is effic ient, spiders may reduce territorial behavior 

(Krafft 1982). 

Most spiders utilize silk to link themselves Lo their environment and to other 

spiders; it acts as their primary tool for survival. Spiders that function without silk, in fact, 

are not social. Silk spun into webs connects spiders and encourages cooperation and 

socialization. Spiders often infuse web si lk with chemical compounds to attract prey and 

mates, or to send social messages. Chemical communication within web-building became 

standard first in sexual signals, when female spiders began using pheromones (Weygoldt 

1977). Communication by vibration, on the other hand, may have started to help locate 

prey within webs. Metabus gravidus uses vibrations both for finding food and 

communicating antagonism. 



11 

Vibrations travel along the silken threads of web-spinners and inform the home 

spider of what is on the web. Cyclosa turbinate, for example, can understand the d i fferent 

frequencies of vibrations that each insect gives off when caught in its web (Suter 1986). 

H owever, it is extremely challenging to measure the frequencies of insects on actual webs 

because of technical difficulties. Not all threads in a web have the same amount of 

stickiness, and all webs have different sizes and shapes. A significant relationship has 

been found between larger species of spiders and webs w ith larger volumes, suggesting 

that the energetic requirements of spiders set web-s ize boundaries (Opell 1995). Spiders 

have clear environmental boundaries set forth by their webs, which for us may act as a 

metaphor for investigations in to our own environmental constraints and social structures. 

Working within the metaphor of the web, stretching across disciplines, our 

language serves as the silken thread of connection. The following section illustrates how 

writing within a scientific discipline calls for stylistic differences in language. 

Historicall y, "sc ientific" writing has idealized objectivity, while remaining, in reality, 

subjecti vely motivated and crafted. By presenting this example the reader w ill notice a 

clear contrast in the style of observations, and hopeful ly respond by recognizing the 

strength of diversity in these contrasted subjecti ve styles. The study is presented in the 

accepted style of scientific language and methodology. 

How Spiders Live Communally: 

One Species of Social Spiders at Tiputini Biodiversity Station, Ecuador 

In the following observational study, data was collected on one species of 

communal spider Anelosimus eximius (A raneae, Theridiidae) near the Tiputini 

Biodiversity Station, on the Tiputini River in Ecuador. Because of its communal status, 

key behaviors of the species were tracked. Findings indicate that certain behaviors occur 

within a regulated time frame, and that an identi fiable number of these behaviors may be 

classified as communal, cooperative, or social. Behaviors among the social species of 

spider A. eximius were identified observationally. During observations the focus was on 

hunting, feeding, web maintenance and repair. Behavior was communally l imited within 



12 

certain tasks, including web building and repair, whereas data showed strong communal 

tendencies within the tasks hunting and feeding. Overall communal behavior was found 

to be the norm in the social spider A. eximius, with only certain specific tasks performed 

individually. Results of behavior classification were graphed to show time of activity and 

activity type. Results indicate the highest amount of communal acti vity occurring in 

evening hours. 

I ntroduction 

Within the fi eld of neotropical ecology the question of social and communal 

spiders has been studied in the tropics by researchers such as Christenson Furey, 

H enschel, K rafft, Leborgne, Lubin , Marques. Pasquet, Ulbrich, and Yasconcelos­

Netto. Factors identified as influencing communal behavior in spider species indicate 

an evolutionary tendency towards either individual or communal life. Communal 

groups build webs together and cooperate as a group to fulfi ll survival needs. 

Resident spiders are classified by size, sex, and age, and the communities function 

using a caste-type system for distribution of survival tasks. Within a communal 

network of spiders, the size of the colony varies, as wel l as the shape and type of web 

bui lt. The webs of these spiders usual ly occur on trees or tall shrubs in the jungle. 

Webs are constructed of non-sticky silk connected to large areas wi th branches and 

bunches of leaves contained within the structure. The leaves provide shelter for the 

groups during severe weather and for certain castes of the group during the day 

(L ubin 1994), for the young and for and instar development. Survival depends on a 

number of behavioral activities, which are typically divided among the res ident 

spiders. 

Some of the behaviors identified and described in social spider relations 

include hunting, prey capture, feeding, web bui lding. web repair , web maintenance, 

and reproducti ve tasks. In communal webs the eggs and juveni le spiders were 

effectively protected by the group, and by the tent- l ike web. Because of this 

protect ive advantage, more spiders are able to surv ive in communal societies 



13 

compared w i th solitary spiders. Prey capture in groups general ly resu l ts in larger prey 

and high levels of capture success (L eborgne et al 1998), potentially gi ving an 

evolutionary advantage to individuals survi ving within a co lony. 

Anelosimus eximius is a species of social spider that has evolved entirely social 

behavior. T hese spiders are highly social: they can be seen touching each other 

continuously wi th their forelegs and palps (Wi lson 197 1 ). lt is one of the few species of 

spiders that li ves together on a permanent basis and completes all tasks communally, 

including web repair, hunting, and feeding. T hese acti vities as wel l as other social 

behaviors are easi ly observed in A. eximius colonies. 

The purpose of the study was to observe and investigate the social behaviors of 

the spider species A. eximius. Some of the questions motivating the observations were as 

follows: What are the main behaviors of the communal spider A. eximius? When are the 

spiders most active? Do factors such as web manipulation affect the acti vity of the group? 

The sections that fol low show the data col lected as a group, analyze the data in Table I , 

and illustrate basic conclusions from the collected data. 

Materials and Methods 

A natural colony of A. eximius was used for our observations. This colony was 

found on Numa trail at Tiputini Biodiversity Station near the banks of the Tiputini River 

in the eastern lowlands of the Amazon Bas in in Ecuador. The study web was 1.5 meters 

wide by 4 meters tal l and held+/- !000 individuals. Over a four-day period, fi ve hours 

per day, data were collected for the time span 0800 hours to 2100 hours. Three data 

col lectors took turns recording behaviors and time of behavior. 

Description of Behaviors 

The following paragraphs describe and classify behaviors observed. 



Web Repair 

Spider moves through the area that needs repair, attaching non-sticky l ines 

weaving back and forth until complete. At a close distance, a spindle of silk can be seen 

emerging from the spider's abdomen, or its spinnerets, as it works. 

Hunting 

14 

Spiders are seen scattered throughout the web. Perched motionless they wait, unti I 

an insect becomes trapped in the web. The nearest spider to this insect begins the hunt 

with a stop/start motion, and is the first to approach the prey. The size of the insect will 

determine the number of spiders involved in the hunting process. As a group, the spiders 

perform the same stop/start motion, stopping to sense from the web vibrations where in 

the web the insect is caught. The first spider to arrive will take the first bite and inject 

toxin to subdue the prey, then multiple spiders will begin to attack. Cooperative hunting 

has been observed in multiple social spider populations. Furey noted that cooperati ve 

hunting is the norm, especially when prey is larger and more difficult to subdue (Furey 

1996). As the insect is bitten the spiders also begin attaching threads and wrapping the 

insect. After the insect has been fully subdued it is then carried to a leaf nest where 

feeding wi l l take place. 

Feeding 

Feeding usually occurs under a leaf nest. After capturing and subduing the prey, 

the hunting group drags the prey to one of the established leaf nests. Spiders from the 

colony surround the insect on all sides, creating a spherical shape. As the spiders feed 

they are in constant motion and contact with the prey until the group completes feeding, 

leaving only the exoskeleton to be removed from the web during web maintenance. 

Results 

Social behaviors most readily observed were the tasks identified as hunting, 

feeding, and web maintenance and repair. Overall activi ty in the colony seemed to be 

fairly moderate in the morning, slow during the day, and then began to pick up at dusk. 



Feeding was the only activity observed throughout the day, hunting slowed during 

midday, and web repair seemed to be restricted to night (See D aily Behavior: Table I). 

Daily Behavior 

Time (hours) 

Behavior 0800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 

2100 

Hunting + + - + - + + + + + 

Feeding + + + + + + + + + + 

Repair - - - - - - + + + + 

TABLE I . Daily behav10r ol A. eximius, based on observauons taken over a four-day period. The table 
shows behaviors and ti me of day they were observed ( +) or not observed (-). 

Discussion 

15 

The observations show that hunting, feeding, and web maintenance are a few of 

the major activities of A. eximius. All three of these activities were performed, in large 

part, communally. When spiders l ive, hunt, feed, and reproduce together within the same 

web, this behavior has been called cooperative. Within the spider family, cooperative 

behavior suggests a social species (Pasquet and Krafft 1992; Brach 1975; Jackson 1979; 

Krafft 1970; Riechert et al 1986; Vol lrath and Rhode-Arndt 1983; W ard 1986; W ard and 

Enders 1985). 

Within the colony observed, the population neared I 000 individuals, the web was 

very large and well-established, and there seemed to be a number of juvenile spiders in 

the group. Depending on the amount of food and shelter available, " L arge colonies may 

contain several thousand individuals in a very smal l area" (Pasquet and Krafft 1992). 

T his leads us to bel ieve that large populations of spiders in a group nest may provide a 

survival advantage. Pasquet and K rafft also suggest that communal l i ving in a group web 

provided a number of advantages to individuals of a colony, including protection from 

the elements, protection against predators and parasites, and better prey capture rates 

(Pasquet and Krafft 1992). 



Over the course of the day, observations show that the lowest levels of activi ty 

were in the noon and afternoon hours, and began rising at dusk and into the 

16 

evening. While spiders remained spread throughout the web and continued hunting and 

group feeding throughout the day when prey was captured. activi ties such as web 

maintenance and repair were not observed at all. Th is leads to the conclusion that web 

maintenance and repair occurred after dusk and into the evening hours. Marques et al 

noted lower levels of behavior from I 000-1500 hours, and that later in the afternoon and 

in the early evening colonies began web repair and higher intensity hunting (Marques et 

al 1998). They also remarked that when prey vibrated the web su fficiently during the day, 

capture was attempted by the colony (M arques et al 1998). In his study, Lubin observed 

that feeding activity in group nests continued throughout the day, while hunting, prey 

capture, and web maintenance and repair began at 1830 hours. Pasquet and K rafft also 

observed this pattern of daily acti vity, with high levels of web repair occurring at 1800 

hours, low levels of feeding throughout the day, and almost no activity at 1200 

hours. They named midday an "inactive period" and dusk as an "active period" (Pasquet 

and Krafft 1992). These studies support observed data of the times activities occurred. 

Social spiders perform a variety of activities communally. These behavioral 

adaptations have allowed social spiders to claim a unique niche w ithin the biosphere. 

While a simple observational study without previous preparation, this study on communal 

spiders proved to be both informative and interesting. Observations, upon further 

research, correlated with the rest of the research in the field of social spiders. Changes to 

the study would include the following: Increase the length of the total study period, from 

30 to 60 days; conduct observations beginning at dawn, and continuing throughout the 

evening and night; select a higher number or group webs to observe; finally, cons ider 

more complex hypotheses instead of conducting a direct observational study. I n 

conclusion, the hypothesis that social spiders perform a variety of activities communally 

was proven correct. 

Perhaps you are wondering, at this point, what spiders have to do with 

embodiment or humanity, and why you've j ust spent your time read ing about spiders in a 



17 

jungle you'll probably never see. Whi le humans certainly are nol spiders, there are many 

reasons why this study ass ists us as metaphor for our understanding of embodiment. First 

of all, the format of the scientific study contrasts w ith the language used in other 

disciplines that contain more awareness of their own subjectivity. The "objecti ve" format 

gives us an important difference in style. Remembering that "objectivity" continues to be 

motivated by subjective variables such as the living systems we exist w ithin, funding, 

time availability, and data synthesis can help us be aware that we construct the stories 

that we cal l fact. How we write our "stories" shapes how we "learn" the world around us. 

Wi thout ecologically whole ways of interpreting our connection with in the Earth, we 

construct and perpetuate deep separations. 



18 

Chapter 2: Political Ecology, Transition to Webbed Humans 

"What a quantity of abstruse science for a bit o_f' string/ Let us not be surprised. A pellet 

of shot swinging at the end of a thread, a drop of dew trickling down a straw, a splash of 

water rippling under the kisses of the air, a mere trifle after all, requires a Litanic 

scaffolding when we wish to examine it with the eye of calculation. We need the club of 

Herculestocrushajly." - J.H. Fabre, 1913, The Li feofaSpider 

Once upon a time, once within time, a biological story was written and told: a 

human being is one of many animals, a mammal , located in the family Hominidae, 

belonging to the genus Homo, of the species sapiens. Biological ly, H ominidae Homo 

sapiens names the space within which we, as humans, create and live out our time in 

human scale, on the planet Earth, our home. As an animal, the sapiens, we develop 

ways of surviving and reproducing in order to continue to exist as a species. 

Predecessors of our species, including Homo habilis, or " handy man," Homo erectus, or 

" upright man," and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. "wise man" Neanderthal , have 

lived with this planet for nearly two million years, surviving wi thin its natural 

ecosystems and perpetuating themselves. Our species today exists in this great ri ver of 

continuation, making choices that contribute to the longer term survival of the Earth's 

systems that we are a process w ithin. As a species, we are a living process w ithin the 

whole. 

In a social story, the species human lives in community. Socially, humans 

usually live with other humans, and spend a large part of their lives relating and 

cooperating in order to both survive and thrive in the world. The species human also 

learns to rel ate social ly to the more-than-human world, and learns how to see and hear 

the more-than-human world because of the direct teachings within our community. 

When our cu ltural teachings neglect the complexity of our relationships wi thin the 



19 

more-than-human system, we pass along incomplete and inaccurate stories of our place 

in the ecosystem. Learning to listen to specific ecological stories around us w ill better 

inform our stories and our choices for the species. 

Keeping in mind the obvious differences between human social groups and the 

social groups of web-building spiders, let us explore a few of our similari ties. L ike A. 

e.ximius humans live primaril y in social groups. and in the present day many of us live in 

communities of at least 1000. While groups must be large enough to ensure survival of 

the whole, they must maintain certain patterns in relation to their environment in order to 

ensure that other sorts of li fe patterns flourish as well. Cooperation is essential both 

within the group and in relation to these other li fe forms. While we may not know each 

one of these people or life forms personally, we work together to survive, continuing with 

our offspring the same work of our deep time ancestors. 

Our basic needs are the same, " hunting, feeding. and web repair," when you think 

of these loosely and applied to survival for the species human. Hunting general ly refers to 

gathering, growing food, and purchasing food already grown. What has changed is how 

the food comes to us and how we work to obtain it. Feeding ourselves starts with food, 

and then broadens outward to include nurturance of family, community, spiri t. Web 

repair may be applied to both our personal shelter and clothing and also broadened, 

taking into account all our phys ical communal connections after we leave the home: 

paths, trails, roadways, streets, sidewalks, highways, public spaces, landmarks, squares, 

gathering areas, and modes of transportation that assist us in moving our bodies along 

these spaces to other places. In general , our tasks within human life conceptually are 

more similar to that of communal spiders than di fferent. 

The major difference lies in how we weave the webs we live w ithin. Spiders use 

silk produced in their lower abdomens and pulled outward with rear legs from spinnerets, 

weaving the web that helps to contain their existence. They attach this web to the 

ecological environment in the same way that we build houses w ithin ecosystems. Instead 

of silk, we use thoughts, intentions, and language, when we begin to shape the physical 

environment we exist within. Like spiders from their spinnerets, we wri te earth' s webbed 



20 

world from our hearts, from our guts, creating the reali ty we want, as well as the reality 

we think we see. Like spiders, we catch food w i th well -woven webs, and if we do not 

maintain them as well as their connections to the outer ecosystems, our ability to survive 

as a community weakens. 

M any thinkers have noted the development of language on the species human, 

and most believe its influence to be highly significant. Capra writes, in The Web of Life, 

"Human societies are a special case because of the crucial role of language, which 

M aturana has identified as the critical phenomenon in the development of human 

consciousness and culture. While the cohesion or social insects is based on the exchange 

of chemicals between the individuals, the social uni ty of human societies is based on the 

exchange of language .... The components of an organism exist for the organism's 

functioning, but human social systems exist also for their components, the individual 

human beings. Thus, in the words of M aturana and Varela: "The organism restricts the 

individual creativity of its component entities, as these uni ties exist for that organism. 

The human social system amplifies the individual creativity of its components, as that 

system exists for these components .... Organisms and human societies are therefore very 

different types of living systems" (Capra 1996: 2 1 I ). According to this statement, as a 

whole the human social system should strengthen individual creati vity. This requires a 

shift in the system's organization, one that prioritizes both-and relational principles. 

Instead of an either/or pulling between individual li fe and communal li fe, the 

organization of our communities should fundamenta lly sustain the creati ve energies of 

the individual. If our communities do not serve this purpose, than they must be re-webbed 

for whole pattern sustainabil ity. 

Gregory Bateson questioned the "differences that make a difference" to our social 

webbing, and wondered how we select information that wi ll help the species human to 

become aware of and then shape our environments. He states, " Of this infinitude [of 

units], we select a very limited number which become in formation. In fact, what we mean 

by information- the elementary uni t of information- is a di fference which makes a 

difference" (Bateson 2000: 459). You could .say that a difference that makes a difference 



21 

is a distinction within reality (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) that creates space for 

an opportunity of otherness. Since ecosystems function interdependently, differences that 

make a difference are made obvious when one part of the whole shifts or is shifted, 

shifti ng the pattern as a whole towards another way of functioning. This leads us to the 

idea found in chaos theory that killing a butterfly in one part of the world will change the 

course of a hurricane on the other side of the planet. Differences that make a difference 

mean distinctions that allow spaces for change to be apparent. Our task in the moment is 

to be aware, to be conscious of these spaces of possibility because they are also the 

spaces for choice and change to occur. 

Capra states that organisms, such as the spider community, are very different from 

human societies. The two are different types of li ving systems, it 's true. In a sense 

though, because they are both living systems, they wil l both exhibit the main principles of 

how living systems function in their environment. Like the spiders we exist as a whole, 

and this similarity is the difference that makes a difference-as a whole system we are 

implicitly bound to our environment. Properties of the whole system will emerge in both 

the individuals and in their communities. These emergent properties form, contain, and 

reflect the gestalt of the overall system. Jn Bateson's words, "the mental characteri stics of 

a system are immanent, not in some pan, but in the system as a whole" (qtd. in Bowers 

1995: 33). As a whole, how our social systems unfold reflects the gestalt of our 

environment's whole. Let us understand the basic principles of living systems, so that we 

may learn the rules of whole and healthy patterns. and develop metaphors that support the 

health of the whole. 

Systems Theory 

Life does not exist in a vacuum; liv ing things do not exist alone. In fact, where 

life exists there are always complex systems of interrelating forces . Even in the 

simplest forms of life there exist complex processes. I n the words of Henry Stapp: " An 

elementary particle is not an independent ly existing unanalyzable entity. It is, in 

essence, a set of relationships that reach out ward to other things" (Capra 1996: 3 1 ). [n 



this statement we are told that no l ife is un-examinable, untouchable. Because life is 

primarily nested in a multitude of relationships. we may recognize i t by its deepest 

tendencies. 

22 

Physicist Fritjof Capra writes about ecological complex ity and living systems. In 

his work. The Web of Life, he describes the fundamental aspects of living systems that 

appear in even simple membrane-bounded cellular bubbles: "The vesicles are open 

systems, subject to continual flows of energy and matter, while their interiors are 

relatively closed places in which networks of chemical reactions are l ikely to develop. 

We can recognize these two properties as the roots of living networks and their 

dissipative structures" (Capra 1996: 32). From this we learn that life consists of a 

dissipative network of processes and patterns. The network acts non- linearly, a difficult 

thing to describe in words or mathematics. This stumped scientists for years before 

complex equations describing non- linear dynamics were developed. 

Within any liv ing system a few simple rul es consistently apply. These may vary 

in how they are grouped and described, but basically they are as foll ows: 

I. A living system is materially and energetically open; it needs to take in food 
and excrete waste to stay ali ve. 

2. It operates far from equilibrium; there is a continual flow of energy and matter 
through the system. 

3. It is organizationally closed, a metabolic network bounded by a membrane. 
4. It is self-generating, self-maintaining, sel f-renewing; each component helps to 

transform and replace other components. 
5. Dynamic systems under pressure are capable of very creative forms of sel f-

transcendence in order to maintain the limits of their patterned form. 

These principles shape all systems that exhibi t li fe. Whi le individually these rules are 

important, in this case looking at the fi ve rules together will be more helpful for our 

discuss ion. In the case of l ife, it is the whole of the pattern that creates the parts. ln living 

systems the whole connotes a fundamental pattern around which the organism may 

continually reorganize. Without the whole. the parts dissolve and reconfigure in to 

something other than the original. 

The irreducible nature of the whole and the asserti on that the whole is greater than 

the sum of its parts, or a pattern 's gestalt, was l'irst named such by philosopher Christian 



23 

von Ehrenfels. This occurred just after quantum physics shifted from classical Cartesian 

mechanism to quantum mechanics in the 1920s. After three centuries of the Cartesian 

paradigm, Capra describes how the new physics radically shifted the nature of reality, 

with events having tendencies toward certain outcomes. He writes, "probabilities are 

determined by the dynamics of the whole system. Whereas in classical mechanics the 

properties and behavior of the parts determine those of the whole, the situation is 

reversed in quantum mechanics: it is the whole that determines the behavior of the parts" 

(Capra 1996: 3 1 ) . Conceptually this shift is profound, and it significantly impacted 

developments in organismic biology, physics, and later literature and other fields. 

The conceptual shifts in biology led to further understandings about complex 

systems. Where complexity studies have trad itionally focused on structural anal ysis of 

complex structures, lately research has been directed towards the processes by which 

these structures self-maintain and emerge towards new levels of complexi ty and order. 

Studying processes creates a new way of understanding living systems, for it entai ls a 

consideration of flux and change as other scientific research has often avoided. As the 

mathematics of complexity has become more adept at model ing highly complex, non­

linear dynamics, research has shifted to include more complex questions. 

Metaphorically, the theory of living systems affects the way we lead our lives. 

Systems thinking starts with a whole, cannot be reduced into parts, and maintains a 

pattern through material flows. Cartesian thinking breaks down the whole to try to better 

understand its parts, but when reassembled these parts often do not add up to the original 

whole. Significant differences may be found between structures and patterns, which are 

self-organizing and self-maintaining. Patterns of the whole will re-emerge in the 

interactions and relationships, while the materials configuring the structure will change 

and shift drastically through time. Heisenburg, whose work in physics deeply impacted 

thi s paradigmatic shift, entitled his scientific autobiography The Part and the Whole , 

signifying how important he believed this conceptual revolution to be. 

Heisenburg studied the impacts that observation had on the outcome of particle 

movement in physics. What he found was remarkable, that observers change the outcome 



24 

of experiments on the paths of particles. When one attempts to chart the path of a particle, 

this path will be affected in certain ways. This also led to the discovery that waves, when 

observed, would collapse into particle form, meaning that our observation fundamentally 

affects the way our environments are shaped. 

Further research into these matters led to the development of the Santiago theory, 

which looks at consciousness itsel f as the tool by which we both observe and create the 

world. As a living organism, our structure both allows and prompts us to notice our 

environment in certain ways, reinforcing some aspects of our surroundings and 

decreasing the power and impact of other aspects. Far from reflecting the abstract world 

in reality, we bring forth a world based on our navigation techniques and perceptions. In 

this case our process of living creates both our bodily structure and our perception of the 

material world. This perception in turn changes the way we interact with our re-perceived 

and re-organized environment. Working as a whole. our process forms our structure and 

our perceptions of structure then affect our process. Cognition describes our "process." 

Cognitive science explores the nature of consciousness and the role of perception 

in creating a world. Cognition includes al l of what the species human defines as living 

our lives, what we perceive, our emotions, and all of our behavior. Researchers Francisco 

Varela and Humberto Marurana believe cognition to be the creative force that we use to 

regenerate and maintain our environment, and that "understanding it as a process that 

involves neither a transfer of information nor mental representations of an outside world 

requires a radical expansion of our scientific and philosophical frameworks" (Capra 

1996: 286). As a species, we are on the edge of a new paradigm as we come to 

understand our experiences to be self-created and maintained. 

Systems thinking supports this model, rejecting the idea of the mentally 

represented, independent world, and that we can glean certain pieces of information about 

that outside world by observing it "objectively". I n the Santiago model of cognition, 

neither representation nor information helps us to know, leavi ng the "information age" 

empty of meaning. Our process of cognition becomes the most important way we create 

our experiences and environment. Varela and Maturana maintain that, '·there are no 



25 

objectively existing structures; there is no pregiven territory of which we can make a 

map-the map making i tself brings forth the features of the territory" (Capra 1996: 27 1 ). 

We exist our world, we embody it and see it unfold around us. Our consciousness 

contains the complex processes with which we engage and maintain Earth . 

L andscape architect Robert M elnick notes the importance of our role in creating 

and perpetuating complexity in our living environment. He reminds us that, " We are 

engaged in a complex relationship with the landscape, which includes the intricacies of 

nature and culture as they are played out wi thin that relationship and the manner in which 

we describe these places" (Melnick 2000: 27). Without complexity we relegate nature 

and therefore ourselves to a limited existence in which growth is scarce and creati ve 

opportunities for new emergence are limited. We need to release the tight hold we l ike to 

think we maintain on the world around us, and re-member ourselves to the creati ve 

possibilities wi thin complex dynamics. When more variables play into the questions, 

answers unfold in ways we could never imagine. 

Over-simplifying our environments has become one of the most dangerous effects 

of the industrial era and the technological way we organize our worlds. In order to 

maintain complexity we need to ask questions in a way that engages not parts of our 

existence, but healthy wholes. "When we have simpli fied the question, it may have 

become, minus its many qualifications, a different question. T he gestal t configures the 

question, and the same question reconfigured can be di fferent" (Rolston 2003: 451 ). We 

must balance, as Holmes Rolston ill declares. "a love for persons with a love for nature", 

at times loving nature before we love persons (Rolston 2003: 460). In this way we will 

ask questions that support Earth w ith processes we may not even understand engaging, 

allowing Earth to maintain the complexi ty of its living systems wi thout us getting in the 

way. 

This leads us back to the principles of l iving organisms. one of which is that 

living systems exist out of equilibrium. Whi le out of equilibrium, living systems continue 

to autopoiesis, or self -regeneration of the organism's material components. In the 1960s 

chemist Ilya Prigogine discovered that living systems tend to exist far from equilibrium, 



26 

in a state of constant material flux (Prigogine and Stengers 1984). This non-linear pattern 

of change actually enables organisms to maintain stability within flow. Prigogine's theory 

of dissipative structures leads to another of the principles of l i ving systems: emergence. 

It appears that systems which exist in disequilibrium, at the edge of what 

physicists call chaos, seem to be well-equipped and always ready for creative forms of 

emergence, or what sc ience cal ls " bifurcation theory". Biologist Stuart Kauffman studies 

emergence in genet ic networking and for cell differentiation (K auffman 1995). He 

postulates that near states of chaos may actually be beneficial to the natural selection of 

living organisms. Because the pressure of energy fl ow and material instabil ity is much 

higher near the boundaries of chaos, while the rules of self-maintenance, self­

organization, and self-transcendence sti ll apply, these organisms may be able to most 

rapidly express flexible and coord inated complex behaviors. Behavior accessing 

complexity and flexibility gives living organisms the best chance for long term adaptation 

through the process of natural selection. 

Biological research reminds us that structure of l iving organisms emerges out of 

complexity. Nonlinear dynamics describe the process of emergence, which 

fundamentally is encoded in the epigenetic network of the organism. A s a system 

maintains itsel f, it does so within the physical constraints of its environment. The pattern 

of emergence lies outside the realm of the genes though, "The genes do not provide a 

blueprint for biological forms. They provide the initial conditions that determine which 

kind of dynamics-or, mathematica lly, which kind of attractors-will appear in a given 

species. I n this way genes stabilize the emergence of biological form" (Capra 2002: 28). 

T he epigenetic network provides the initial conditions, along with the physical constrain ts 

of an organism's environment. From this stabilized space, creative emergence may occur. 

By understanding and embodying the principles of systems theory, we will begin to apply 

these rules to how we manifest and organize our environments. 



27 

The Mystery Ride 

It's seven-thirty on a hot evening in July. Thirty-six bicyclists lay in various positions 

of recline in the center of a roundabout in Portl and. Oregon, surrounded by rosebushes 

and rhododendrons and the golden summer sunshine of the Willamette Valley. The mood 

is quietly festive, with the cyclists gathered in small groups of friends or alone. There is 

conversation and some mixing but for the most part the riders merely relax and wait. 

Suddenly a loud air horn is heard in the distance, followed by cracks, whistles, 

and whooping sounds. Ears perk up and the bicyclists come to a mellow attention about 

the approaching sounds. A small group of bikers appear at the edge of the 

neighborhood' s horizon, coming quickly and loudly down the street, dressed in costumes 

with large sombreros on their heads. Whooping and yelling they skid to a halt around the 

roundabout and announce that the M ystery Ride has begun. 

Those gathered on the green public space get up and prepare to ride w ith the 

large-hatted leaders, securing their pant-legs. fastening their gloves and l ights, and 

cl ipping on their helmets. They don't know where exactly they are preparing to go, but 

they know that they will end up somewhere to watch some movie (powered by standing­

bikes attached to a generator). The point of the evening is chat they will bike together, the 

rest of the evening is the magical part of the M ystery Ride, as it's been named. 

As they begin their ride they are joined by others, encouraged by pedestrians and 

even by some drivers, and about halfway through they meet up with the M ystery Riders 

from the other side of town and form a mass of several hundred. Like the Critical Mass 

events that began in San Francisco in I 992, this evening's ride is a political statement as 

well as a festive and free public gathering. Many of the participants are familiar with 

Cri tical M ass rides and with what it feels l ike to be a bicyclist in the automobile age. 

Bicyclists in urban areas are well aware of the dangers of riding side by. ide with 

thousands of pounds of moving metal, oil , gasoline, plastics, transmission fluids, and 

glass. Bikers deal with this relationship in a variety of ways that include legal signal ing, 

carefully staying to the right hand side of the road. and wearing proper helmets, l ights, 

and reflective clothing. Many cyclists don 't follow these standards though, and often 



28 

scare drivers with their subtle unlit presence on streets in the evening, coming off 

sidewalks unannounced, or streaking through ye llow lights. When people who ride 

bicycles want the same respect on the streets as cars, their actions as political veh icles 

make a difference in how they are regarded. Acting in a fairly predictable manner al lows 

drivers and pedestrians to trust their movements on the streets, and this type of action is 

desirable when looking at overall collective action. 

Collective action within communities creates larger potential for social change 

than individual action. While the modern " I " has been revered since civilization provided 

some individuals with the opportunity to survive while living a fairly controlled and 

socially isolated lifestyle, most of the species human lives, works, and plays col lectively, 

in communities and within social networks. When change begins, it usually spreads 

through those social networks like vibrations through a communally woven spider web. 

Those aware of the web, feel the changes in its vibrations, and respond to those changes 

accordingly. 

For humans, the web is a complex and dynamic set of variables that include social 

and ecological components, among others. Based on our understanding of sel f­

manifestation and creative emergence, our webs provide us multiple dai ly opportunities 

to create changes. Amitai Etzioni, in his article, "Creating Good Communities and Good 

Societies" provides us with a helpful definition of community: "Community is a 

combination of two elements: A) A web of affect- laden relationships among a group of 

individuals, relationships that often cri sscross and reinforce one another (rather than 

merely one-on-one or chainlike individual relationships). B) A measure of commitment 

to a set of shared values, norms, and meanings, and a shared history and identity- in 

short , to a particular culture" (Etzioni 1996: 127). CulLUrally we exist in communities, 

and our cultures provide the initial conditions from which we make daily and 

fundamental decisions. While these initial conditions increase and decrease probabilities 

for certain outcomes, the potential for change occurs where there is more awareness 

about whole systems, and increased awareness occurs near the edges of stable society. 



29 

Collecti ve Action and Social Change 

Perhaps you've heard the "Hundredth Monkey" story, in which monkeys on an 

isolated island in the ocean slowly learn to wash the sand off their fruit. After about a 

hundred monkeys learn to wash their fruit, the monkeys on another iso lated island in the 

ocean suddenly begin washing the sand of their fruit as we ll , and the "social change" 

spreads. Whether this story is true or not, there has been some correlation around the 

globe of cultures making certain leaps in technology or in rel igious organization 

historically at similar moments. Chaos theory has also found that what seems l ike 

insignificant happenings locally sometimes cause larger than ''normal" changes in distant 

locations. Concerning environmental choices in W estern society, stories like these are 

what some researchers cite in hopes that our society will make significant and necessary 

changes quickly. Collective action pertains to social change directly in that without large 

numbers collecti vely making radical (rootful ) differences in material choices, our society 

will continue to function reinforcing socially choices Lhat are material ly destructive. 

How do we realistically encourage changes li ke releasing our addiction to oi l , 

scal ing our lives back into the realm that we our bodies understand and can maneuver 

ourselves about energetically? In Changing Cultural Practices, Anthony Biglan explores 

questions like these in depth. He found that individual behavior can be influenced most 

effectively with appropriate reinforcing or avers ive events and consequences for their 

actions within different scales of certain life-choices. He also believes that changing the 

behavior of individuals wi ll have a positive impact on spreading that change through 

wider human society. He lays out the fol lowing strategies for positively effecting change, 

"We can change the cost/benefit of a targeted behavior through one or more of the 

following strategies: (a) increasing reinforcement for the targeted behavior; (b) 

decreasing aversive consequences for the targeted behavior; (c) decreasing reinforcement 

for competing behaviors; (d) increasing aversive consequences for competing behaviors" 

(Biglan 1995: 137). When we apply one or more of these approaches to the wider issue in 

which we want to create changes, we will have the potential for greater impacts in 

different scales of society, from the individual to the community to the state. 



30 

The Critical M ass rides have shown agents of community action that effecti ve 

social change is mobilized on many different levels of participation. Mobilization takes 

the form of individuals embodying the basic principles of their idea of Critical M ass 

rides, which as we have seen, are diverse. Many participants, many scales of enactment, 

"Critical M ass' function as an embodiment of alternative transportation, is 

simultaneously local, regional , and global" (Blickstein and Hanson 200 I: 350). This 

multileveled approach to community organization " ... creates new communities and 

weaves networks of activists that span geographic scales" (Blickstein and Hanson 200 I: 

36 1 ), strengthening a diversity of movements all aimed in part at sustainable survival. 

Because M ass organizers leave space for diversity in the creation of rides (where, 

when, how, what for, who), Critical M ass has been effective on mul tiples scales, all 

"aimed at shaping both bel iefs and perceptions of problems as wel l as the material 

practices what will help to construct a sustainable future" (Blickstein and H anson 200 I: 

348). With the gestalt of environmental sustainabi lity, the material flow that supports 

this pattern wi ll organize itsel f differently on every ride. According to the principles of 

living systems, the pattern creates the outcome, and the material structure wi ll change 

each time the pattern's event is enacted. Were organizers to control exactly how the rides 

took place, the movement would be disconnected from the energetic reality of a l iving 

system. Initiators of Critical Mass rides create inclusiveness and stimulate creativity by 

their lack of an exclusive definition for what the rides offer. 

The "mystery ride" described here is similar to hundreds of similar occurrences 

that have begun to occur international ly over the last eleven years. In the post-modern 

age of the automobile, individuals have begun to get out of their cars and back onto the 

streets in community. The Western species human has begun to wake up to its isolated 

predicament of oil addiction and embodied imprisonment and has gotten creative about 

how to deal with the situation. In the example above, some people have begun to act 

subtly but politically in the face of monied consumerism, and radically remind their city 

streets of their original heritage-spaces of connective community. 



3 1 

The bicycle is the perfect metaphorical and literal vehicle for their action-an 

inexpensi ve, durable, body-powered people mover that " behaves" like a horse in the way 

it allows for people to relate and move across the landscape together. It requires no "oil" , 

not even for the bike chain, although most people do oil their bike chains with some form 

of the stuff. Its tires, which are still rubber, and tox ic to make and to dispose of, at least 

can be made to last a very long time. It gives off little waste, except what the humans 

themselves excrete. Bicycles are, for the end of the postmodern age, the perfect mode of 

transportation in that they provide riders with an embodied experience of relati vity. 

Relativity Embodied 

When the air crosses you from deep places by the ri ver it smells muskily alive, 

holding the awareness of small creatures l i ving in its mudded banks. in the roots of its 

riparian communi ties, in the rich waters that fl ow within the curved bottom of its bed. 

Your hands hold two round metal bars, your feet are placed carefully on pedals, you are 

i lluminated by white light in the front and red in the rear. A s you move along city streets 

near the ri ver you make no sound except for breathing that is slightly heavier than when 

your body is at rest. You are riding on your bicycle at speeds faster than walking, rol ling 

through the evening, with the air, as the air. You are fully and sensually connected. 

You remember when you first felt the ground moving under the wheels of a 

bicycle, suddenly quicker than you'd ever understood motion to occur around you, 

somehow also through you. Directly connected to the ground under your body, the seat of 

a bike is in turn directly connected to the feel of the ground under the wheels. Bumpy or 

smooth you register the turf in the pads of your feet and on your seat. The muscles of 

your legs also register the surface, how level it i s, the steepness of its curve, uphill or 

down, how hard your heart muscle has to pump to keep your legs occupied with sugars 

from your blood circulating. You are reminded w ith every breath, wi th every pump of 

your heart, with the temperature of the air, and with the smell of the river that you are 

very much alive as you ride through the streets on your bicycle. 



32 

This feeling may be part of what motivates bikers onto the streets every day, to 

travel to work or to meet friends across town. Sometimes bicyclists meet w ith aggression 

from drivers of automobiles, trucks, or buses, sometimes they meet difficult weather or 

road conditions-slippery, cold, wet, or steep. Perhaps they have to face the darkness of 

early winter days, or the similar deepness of winter nights with only the small bright 

lights and their foam helmets to make them visible to the other sharers of the roads. 

Bicycling often challenges its participants with the very nature of its process-seasons, 

weathers, social and political conditions- so bikers must have something deeply 

compelling that keeps them in their bodies, on their bikes, and on the streets. This drive, 

which is not the drive of a car driver, comes from experiences shared wi th the 

environment. For those who bike this becomes year after year of shared understandings. 

These include what it feels like to be alone on a road in the quiet of an early morning, in 

the rush of heavy traffic or going at faster speeds, and the feel of the motions of your 

body in relation with the motions of the bicycle along with the movement of the 

surrounding world as well. Bicyclists don't often discuss personal experiences such as 

these, but their experiences may motivate them towards actions such as participation in 

Critical M ass rides. 

Critical Mass 

In September of 1992 in San Francisco a group of people began what they've 

called, "foremost. a celebration ... a way to bring various populations together in a festive 

reclaiming of publ ic space" (Carlsson et al 1994: intro). The name " Critical M ass" 

describes a phenomenon that a few cyc lists noticed while watching a film about China: 

bicycle riders would collect at an intersection, waiting until they had gained a mass large 

enough to then take the street and make other veh icles wait until they crossed. Their 

"critical mass" was the body of bikers that allowed the redistribution of energy in that 

intersection to include the " less powerful " mode of transportation, even momentarily 

shifting the balance of ways of traveling. I n the U.S. cyclists began with that idea and 

began what was first called the "Commuter Clot." wherein the last Friday of each month 



bicycle commuters would meet at a public square and ride through the city's streets 

together, en masse, taking the intersections as a group. The monthly "celebrations" 

caught on, and then spread nationally and internationally. so that now they occur on a 

large scale worldw ide. 

33 

Cyc ling in a group feels very di fferent, especially in an urban environment, on 

busy city streets. While bikers are always vulnerable, in the city they feel especially 

exposed to the amount of traffic, pollution. and noise of many people concentrated into a 

small amount of space. L arger numbers of cyclists in a group alleviate the sense of 

vulnerability, and provide the safety of more visibility on the streets, if nothing else. 

When the rides started they attracted small groups, 50-1 00 people. L ater they grew, 

gathering momentum, metaphorically coming closer ro a city-wide critical mass of 

cycl ists. In cities all over the Earth bicyclers gather regularly to remember that they don' t 

ride alone, and to remind drivers that they don't "own the road" uniquely. Critical Mass 

rides occur infrequently enough to surprise most people seeing the group of cyc lists in the 

streets, and to act as a positive reminder of other-than-car ways of being, modes of 

transportation. The ride makes people participate in the event of it, whether they are 

watching or cycling, and this engagement creates the significance of each of the rides. 

Critical M ass has been self-named by the group that conceived of it, as both "a 

large-scale, decentralized grassroots movement," and an "organized coincidence" 

(Carlsson et al 1994: intro). The pattern of the idea has never been about individuals who 

thought of it, always about the gestalt of the ride as its own li ving organism. This calls 

forth the principles of living systems that we explored in chapter one, including material 

and energetic openness,_ disequilibrium, organizational closure, self-organization, self ­

maintenance and sel f-generati on. A living system continually changes its material 

composition and maintains its fundamental organizaLional pattern. If we consider the 

Critical M ass ride to have a foundational gestalt and to be a complex organism, we could 

apply the rules of living systems to i ts makeup. Because of its decentralization and lack 

of organizational leadership, when Critical M ass rides form, they are materially diverse, 

autopoietic, and spontaneously creati ve. 



34 

The founders of Critical Mass seek to preserve the creative flexibility of the ride, 

and every member has a different take on how that is to be done. One fl ier from an East 

Bay Critical Mass ride in November of 1993 states, ·'Critical M ass is, or should be, 

something different. .. A space where people do not have ideas or actions imposed on 

them, where people can take an active, rather than a passive role in building a li vable 

future, in however small a way." Further, mass participants should be sel f-created with in 

the col lective ride, "Because no one is in charge on our monthly ride, and no specific 

ideology is set forth, participants are free to invent their own reasons for being here." The 

root of the ride is, "to build community [ in diversity] and offer an alternative" 

(D' Andrade 1993: critique), in this case, an alternative world to that of pure competition, 

consumption and capitalism. In a sense, the ride emerges from the variables present at the 

time of its organization. Different people mass each time, ride different routes through 

different traffic and weather patterns, feel and participate differently during each moment 

of a particular ride. There are no fixed rules, only a gestalt held in common among 

participants, leaving room for the creative emergence of each ride. 

T he power of the ride lies with its participants, a present day resolution to the 

ongoing revolution of "other" empowered societies. Large societies carry with them the 

natural tendency of power being drawn by stronger or more insistent figures in the group 

from those with less directed or more gently oriented members. Within the critical mass 

rides, because riders have the opportunity to come with a sel f-set mission for the ride, 

some conflict often emerges concerning the overal l reason for riding together. Whi le the 

original bunch maintains that the ride is, cemrally, a celebration, many riders attend with 

the agenda of societal change. Perhaps l ike a parade, there occur groups within the group 

of folks more or less interested in pol itical statement. 

One could say the main reason for participating in a critical mass bike ride is that 

you ride a bike. Without a bicycle, or sitting in a bike trai ler, it is pretty difficult to be 

physically in the spirit of the gathering. Cars and pedeslrians often cheer the bikers on, 

perhaps having been part of a ride at one point themselves, or maybe just enjoying the 

unique sight of a large group of cyclists, and this is participation in a sense, but in a 



• 

• 

• 

• 

35 

different sense than riding. Chris Carlsson, one of the original ideologers of the ride, 

describes other common reasons for participaLing. " Those of us who reject the 'deal ' 

foisted upon us by corporate America and seek autonomy are increasingly turning to 

bicycling . ... At this point, bicycling is still a legal act, but make no mistake, it is a major 

threat to the larger dynamics of class exploitation that lie at the core of transportation 

politics in the United States (and in most of the world, for that matter). By bicycling the 

individual greatl y reduces their personal cost of living-it also reduces the extent to 

which one continues to voluntarily participate in the hyper-exploitation of the transit 

system, which steadily transfers wealth from the bottom to the few hands at the top. 

Incidental benefits accrue as well: personal autonomy, so lidarity, face-to-face 

experiences that promote convivia l communication, better health" (Carlsson et al 1997: 

BART). In our case, the " incidental" reasons are perhaps the most deeply embodied 

reasons for riding. These constitute the daily meanings that move bikers when the mass 

ride has ended. B ikers participate, and thei r reasons for participating create the meaning 

of the ride. 

M eaning is created from the collaboration of creati ve energies. Fri tjof Capra 

describes emergence and meaning making in his article " Complexity and L ife," " This 

spontaneous emergence of order at critical points of instabi lity, often simply referred to 

as "emergence," is one of the most important concepts of the new understanding of life. 

Emergence is one of the hallmarks of life. It has been recognized as the dynamic origin of 

development, learning, and evolution. In other words, creativity-the generation of new 

forms-is an integral part of the dynamics or open systems, this means that open systems 

develop and evolve. Life constantly reaches out into novelty" (Capra 2002: 25). When 

systems do not reach out creatively, they slow their growth and reflect more signs of 

entropy. Systems that are alive evolve by emerging and re-emerging creatively with their 

environments, not Ji-om, and not in spite of their environments. 

T his leads to another point that needs clarification-that living organisms, the 

systems that we are describing here-are nonlinear, not describable by linear equations, 

not able to be fixed and reapplied in other environments. Nonli near systems are 



• 

• 

• 

• 

36 

environment dependent (each variable part of the "equation" of process) and unique in 

both time and space. Rifts in the system's process provide opportunities for new 

combinations of variables, and configurations of the system in ways unavailable before 

the rift. When the rift is large, for instance Marx 's description of the deep metabolic rift 

between humans and the soil (Foster 2000), loss on many levels wil l arise in the space 

created by that rift. 

Like a treefall gap in the forest, where sunlight comes in new seeds have a better 

chance of rooting. Where there is room for life to emerge creatively, it will. The issue for 

humans is that our embodied time scale is short compared with how long new life takes 

to emerge. We get only 75 years or so to notice the world around us. The world is large 

and our bodies are small. This brings us to the heart of our embodied scale . 

Participation as Webbing 

When we participate as embodied creatures we are actively engaged in a co­

creative process with our entire environment, a complex system that our brains can not 

linearly analyze but that our bodyminds have evolved within. As a whole system, 

indistinguishable from our environments, our bodyminds understand moving in relation, 

in connection w ith, a processing of ongoing and timeless both-and. This ever present, 

seemingly uncontrollable integrative and integrated space involves our bodyminds. 

Technology addresses and engages parts of our selves, but only the entire environment 

engages our wholeness. Participation in a Critical Mass ride reminds both the cycl ists and 

their environment that wholeness is the reali ty we exist within. 

Participation engages the self, the whole bodymind. in a connection with the 

wider community. This, of course, involves making choices clarifying an individual's 

particular needs and desires for action within that community. In the study entitled The 

Critical Mass in Collective Action, the authors describe the outcome of their research on 

collective action. "For each individual member, the group and its needs are usually only 

part of his life. He has a broader array of interests that he is attempting to realize through 

his activities" (Marwell and Oliver 1993: 5). Participating in col lective action does not 



37 

necessitate that individuals will be motivated by rational motives towards a decision that 

is obviously self-interested. In fact, studies point to other motives such as solidarity and 

altruism as being important for choices that support collective action. 

Within a community we both influence and are influenced, we create our cultural 

community and we are created by it. In The Legal Geographies Reader, Richard T. Ford 

describes the role and function of cultural community and asserts that it has " autonomy in 

that it can exert influence over individual members, construct morali ty, values, desires, 

and provide an epistemological framework for its members" (Ford 200 I: IO I ). In the 

U.S. cultural identities are numerous, and cultural communities function to provide 

members with personal identity in ways that sometimes are challenging to verbal ize. 

Whi le the debate between rational sel f-interested choices and altruistic collective 

action choices has gone on for centuries, looking at the physical reality of the ecological 

community shows that no one can in fact make a completely self-interested choice. 

Within a community we are neither only an indi vidual, nor are we merely an aspect 

without internal self-identity. Therein exists a relational psychological model of both­

and. Starting from this relational model allows the whole system greater strength and 

flexibility because it recognizes greater complexity and creati vity in its participants. As 

creative individuals in multiple complex living and social systems, we contain far more 

potential for sustainable alternatives in our communities than we usually recognize. 

One possible al ternative that sustainable reflects the complex patterns of the 

whole involves the subjective interests of the community's indi vidual. When we make 

"individual" choices, we implicate ourselves in the larger nexus of events that is us. In 

their research Marwell and Oliver have looked at the importance of personal interest, 

referred to as subjective interest in the community. They write, " It is our impression that 

the major predictors of participation are the level of subjective interest in the collective 

good, sol idary ties to other col lective actors, and personal satisfaction or moral rectitude 

from feeling that one is accomplish ing good. These subj ective factors are actually 

consistent with the microeconomic approach, which always contains subjective 

preferences in its equations" (Marwell and Oliver 1993: 7). A microeconomic approach 



38 

often fosters economic diversity and steadiness as well, and reflects patterns of non-linear 

dynamics. Non-linear dynamic systems wou ld certainly bear light on the investigations of 

both individual and collective actions, as well as communal paradigm shifts, because of 

the interdependent nature of communities. 

If we define interdependence as, "behavior that takes account of one's 

participation in collective action or the participation of others," and assuming 

interdependence among communal groups, taking interdependent action seriously makes 

sense to social scientists involved in the study of complex communal systems and 

resource sharing. According to their work in collective action studies, what M arwell and 

Oliver call "large contributors" play a crucial role in the generation and movement of 

large scale community changes. L arge contributors are defined as "those who are highly 

interested and highly resourceful" and who vary their active roles in the action itself, 

sometimes generating support, sometimes contributing "collective good," and sometimes 

mobilizing the group to act towards change. 

Mobilized Mass 

Mobilization begins when a large enough percentage of any given population 

forms, termed a "critical mass." With critical mass, paradigmatic or larger scale change 

has the opportunity to occur. Within any critical mass formation, many questions of 

organization could apply. Looking at critical mass changes as a whole, a cons ideration 

of social networks within that critical mass will be helpful as we pursue the larger 

question of how to generate embodied environmental paradigm shifts. 

How are large-scale environmental paradigm shifts generated? Social scientists 

have proposed a number of helpful possibilities when it comes to questions of 

collective action. Malcolm Gladwel l, author of The Tipping Point, cal ls the energetic 

mobilization of change generating a "social epidemic." With a large enough percentage 

of the given population, changes of epidemic-l ike proportions wil l sweep through the 

entire population, affecting many deeply, and some less so. In order to create a large­

scale movement, paradoxically you must create any number of smaller movements. 



39 

How are these initiated? In our "modern" society, these begin with changes within the 

individual. A s we've been discussing, the changes begin within the embodied sel f. 

When embodied individuals make decisions that honor their deepest values, and 

communicate their choices clearly to those whom they are most connected with, their 

trust groups absorb those changes and reflect thcrn even more widely to larger culture. 

What does a "trust group" look like? According to Gladwel l , individuals wil l rnost often 

consider I 0- 15 people closest to them as being trustworthy and sympathetic to their 

deeper growth. This small number Gladwell calls a "sympathy group," and generally 

includes family and one's closest friends. Sympathy groups are the smallest social unit 

within larger communities and from them most col lective actions are generated. 

After sympathy groups, the importance of the size of community groups generally 

has been questionable. Studies in social dynamics reflect that group size does indeed 

influence collective action. One example has been proven historically over the last 800 

years, in the Hutterite religious communities. early since the inception of the Hutterites, 

its religious leaders have ruled that upon reaching 150 members of a community, that 

group had to split into two and basical ly form a new "tribe." The reasons for this split 

were substantiated by religious beliefs, but the sociopoli tical significance has proven 

itself not only over time for the Hutterites, but more recently in research. 

Clin ical psychologists have been working on the question of physical brain 

structure in relat ion to amount of social networking done in mammals, and while 

conclusive evidence has not been reached, the reigning hypothes is goes as follows. The 

larger the thickness of the cerebral cortex, the more likely the species is to live in socially 

dense networks and form complex cu ltural rituals. Similar to our other shared genes, 

brains of the species human are most similar in this case to certain types of chimpanzees, 

who also form larger social groups and act collectively at times. 

Whether our brain shape determines anything, we have learned that the size of our 

social groups makes a difference in how change takes effect and spreads through a larger 

population, and smaller groups seem to make a big difference in the cohesion of the 

social network in a community. Empirical accounts of social movements and movement 



40 

organizations show again and again that relati vely small numbers of extremely active 

group participants generate widespread changes over the larger community. Thinking of 

communities as a whole, trust is co-created between individuals, bound through 

interwoven sympathy groups, and essentially webs the entire planet. From people to 

domesticated pets and plants, to wild species and landscapes on the larger level, the trust 

generated at the smallest scale weaves the stories of the wholeness of the world. 

The more we understand the complexity and wholeness of the systems we exist 

within , the more we wi ll weave appropriate stories to maintain interdependent 

communities. The author of Counting for Nothing, M arilyn W aring discusses the 

importance of action in many realms. She describes the potential positive role of 

information, "If information empowers, and if power is the capacity to act. .. " then the 

" information age" potentially offers empowerment to the majority of those connected to 

the diversity of information flows. W aring affirms, "The capacity to act takes many 

forms, and the options available are limited only by our fear, our lack of imagination, or a 

belief that specific " politically correct" strategies must be followed. While there exists a 

capacity to act, there is the possibility of change" (W aring 1999: 256). Considering that 

information exists within our cognitive systems, we have the ability to negotiate all sorts 

of responses to our perception of it, as we relate to communi ties of action. Therefore, 

before you rule yourself out of an action group, cons ider the diversity of ways your action 

might be negotiated. 

Generally there are always a smal l number of highly active participants in social and 

cultural change, with wider-scale change occurring after these few have affected many. 

Social epidemics are created by transmission of the change desired by those active few. After 

the generation of paradigmatic desire by the highly active, there are many role