Difference

A Note on Difference

Difference is, carries, or proposes, information – information that can produce change – this is a conventional or systemic perspective and in my opinion this overstates the case for difference – difference is more ecumenical than that – difference is the rationale,  description, and explanation for life itself – for the existence of the human, biological, socio-relational system – without difference the human biological system would not exist – that is how difference is the status quo, the absence of difference  becoming in due course more significant than the presence of difference – the absence of difference is possibly than the presence of difference difference is transformation and difference is the status quo. 

This requires a nuanced understanding of difference. 

Inequality acts as a constraint to the knowing, apprehending, creating and amplifying of difference. 

The knowing of difference requires the practitioner to grasp the idea that they are not separate to the difference they observe –  the difference they observe may not exist without them as the observer – this is about the  recursive relationship between the observer and that which is observed –  between the practitioner and the people they interact with in the therapeutic practice –  these legitimate rationale for such interaction is the existence of a problem or symptom –  the problem or symptom brings what is together to form a therapeutic system collectively apprehend difference an amplifier is that difference system transforming change,  a transformation that for preference no longer includes the practitioner as the observing entity. 

Difference, Analogy & Inequality

1. Difference exists and is literally true, in the world, between us and in us and will remain so until similarity prevails which, it is said in so many intellectual quarters, it once did and may do so again and in the end and until that temporal end is nigh difference exists and is literally true. 
2. Difference and similarity in this context appear as binary, as interlinked concepts, certainly not equal and are not strictly antonyms notwithstanding the fact that they implicitly carry some of these qualities and characteristics. 
3. Difference exists only in the absence of similarity and similarity always exists and is literally true. Similarity is the universal entropic condition – the necessary condition of the universe in the moments before these words were written and this page took its now familiar shape and form. 
4. The key question to be addressed  in this essay is about the relationship between difference and inequality. Does a difference between two people mean that they are unequal in some way? It may appear self–evident that inequality is naturally occurring in human groups and populations and that such inequality is premised upon the differences that prevail between people and between groups of people and between entire races and religions. This essay is not a romantic delusion. This essay is clear that difference does not connote inequality except in so far as such inequalities are imposed upon differences by their socio relational context under circumstances. This is not to suggest that certain inequalities do not have temporary and passing functional value. This essay will set out to demonstrate that inequality is in fact an analogy and therein lays the difficulty or the conundrum. This essay establishes that difference is naturally occurring and inequality is not except in so far as it is an analogy imposed upon difference by humankind and that humankind has become somewhat incautious and cavalier about such imposition and that inequality has lost its essential analogic character. This essay argues for the recovery of inequality as analogy and the dumping of inequality as a literal truth. Rawls peddled the very seductive idea of inequality as naturally occurring in human populations and many other authors have followed suit without questioning this assumption simply because it does appear self–evident. In that way we can reacquaint inequality with its full analogic dexterity and re-establish a fully recursive relationship between inequality and difference. 
5. The context of this essay is therapeutic practice notwithstanding the fact that these ideas may have wider application. Collapsing the construction of inequality as naturally occurring and privileging the recursive relationship between inequality and difference is in practical terms an extremely difficult undertaking. The Bower Place Complex Needs Clinic has set about doing precisely this. Achieving this is not about good and noble intentions or rhetoric which are often paternalistic serving to amplify and ossify inequality. 
6. The Bower Place Complex Needs Clinic argues that the key to achieving this is to rearrange Aristotle – to restructure the relationship between theoria, praxis and poesis; between thinking, doing and making; turning the hierarchical relationship between theoria, praxis and poesis into a fully recursive triangular relationship whereby each informs and invents the other. 
7. Please be aware that this is a specific application of Aristotle and not a generalized proposition. In this way the therapeutic process can collapse the similarity that has been imposed upon difference and inequality, re–establish the distinction between difference and inequality and re-establish inequality as analogy thus enabling difference as a literal truth and inequality as an analogy to do their appropriate recursive business.  
8. The therapeutic process is at its best when it is flexible and dexterous and at play with recursion, in particular the recursive relationship between the literal and the analogy, the failure of which paralyses all dialogue about trauma and all therapeutic process about trauma which in my opinion amplifies the trauma and does not serve to ameliorate it. 
9. Difference takes many forms all generally familiar – over time, between people, between events, spatially – between different locations, between ideas, between emotions, between thoughts, between experiences, between beliefs.  
10. Karl Tomm set out the difference idea elegantly in a series of brilliant papers devoted to the work of the Milan Group in family therapy and in particular dedicated to articulating the difference question as a primary technique and skill in that field of activity. The difference question was linked to active therapeutic curiosity on the one hand and therapeutic change on the other. 
11. Difference is a primary organisational proposition – the exceptional and necessary condition for physical-biological organisation of the living and its socio-relational analogy. 
12. Cybernetics locates difference at the centre of change – specifically that difference is or carries information – and that information is central to the organisation of a living system 
13. This idea sits at the heart of the cybernetic or negative explanation of causation and events – ‘what is’ is explained more by what did not occur than by what did occur – difference can be positive and visible and difference can be negative and not visible – the word visible here is an analogy, a metaphor – causation may be negative in the explanation of the living. 
14. Physicist Richard Feynman (perhaps possessed by a binary idea) designated nature as “She” and said that She is “absurd” – by that he meant – what is visible, what we see on the everyday visible surface of life, may look and be different upon closer examination.  
15. Light can be our analogy of the moment. Light may appear continuous but upon closer examination it is not. Light is both wave and particle and we can see neither with the naked eye. There are a lot of things we can’t see with the naked eye. Sub-atomic particles, snakes in the grass. And in our attempts to examine phenomena we may encounter the absurd.  
16. There is the “observer effect” or “second order cybernetics” in which that which is observed is altered in the act of observation.  
17. Then there is the “uncertainty principle” (Heisenberg) in quantum mechanics – when we examine an object or event, any attempt to pin down or fix into position and accurately assess and perhaps measure one characteristic of that object or event negatively impacts upon our ability to fix into position etc. and accurately assess another characteristic of that object or event. 
18. Again, this is binary and limited but an incredibly useful idea and analogy. In my opinion “quantum mechanics” is referring to the recursive nature of the relationship between the two characteristics of an object or event e.g. weight and momentum. Each characteristic describes the object or event and has explanatory value. Any attempt to fix into position and obtain a greater certainty about one characteristic of a recursive relationship between the two characteristics alters that recursive relationship and in consequence the behaviour of the other characteristic becomes increasingly uncertain.  
19. “The uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics means that the more closely one pins down one measurement (such as the position of a particle), the less accurate another measurement pertaining to the same particle (such as its momentum) must become.” 
20. We must learn from this analogy whenever we are dealing with any set of characteristics that are recursively arranged – which means anything and everything to do with the living and living organisation and systems. 
21. For centuries there was a debate about the structure of light and what it was made of  and whether it was comprised of and explained by the existence of micro–particles or by the existence of wave patterns. As soon as science settled on an explanation that privileged “wave” theory it became evident that science was wrong about this – not that the alternative explanation privileging “particles“ was any better – it clearly was not. What became clear is that light is best understood by using two explanations not one – that two theories – two theories that privilege “particles“ and “waves“ – and that the recursive relationship between these two theories – that propose a recursive relationship between particles and waves – offers are so much more comprehensive and sophisticated understanding of light than any previous explanation or theory. 
22. Again, the analogy here of light is not insignificant – singular explanations and single theory understandings of phenomena do not cut it – are unsatisfactory – that we require multiple theories and multiple explanations to understand complex phenomena and in particular complex phenomena in relationship to each other and where that relationship is most likely recursive.  
23. The suggestion here is that we privilege recursion and any attempt to examine complex phenomena that disrupts that recursion is likely to be deeply flawed. This is even more interesting as this field is not infrequently examining phenomena where that recursion has already been disrupted – ordinarily through events that are described as traumatic. Trauma events are likely to disrupt recursion and in consequence disrupt the critical characteristics that describe that person or relationship. 
24. Trauma and a traumatic event is likely to disrupt the recursive relationship between the literal experience of that event on the one hand and the world of analogy used to describe that event on the other – not infrequently the traumatized person is condemned to silence in relation to the traumatic event or events and such silence starves that person and that experience of essential analogy. The literal by default becomes privileged. 
25. Difference is between – necessarily conceptualised in internally recursive temporal and spatial terms  
26. The relationship between time and space is analogic and literal and wholly recursive.
27. The relationship between the analogy and the literal is wholly recursive. 
28. Recursion may well be the analogy of the 21st century – the next (analogic) window through which we catch a glimpse of the universe or what comes next if it is temporal which it may not be. 
29. Developmental & other disruptions to and around us may offer access to that window – this may not be the only access point 
30. Similarity proposes and is premised upon difference. The similarity between two objects is in fact a statement about the difference between those objects and the other objects around them. In other words, similarity is recognised as similarity when it proposes a difference. 
31. By contrast a difference does not necessarily propose similarity although it may. – a difference proposes the absence of similarity. 
32. In terms of my body I know my hand is different to my foot – ordinarily I know my hand is not my foot and I don’t equate – hand with my foot unless there is something common between my hand on my foot such as a skin disease or a cut or I am referring to the fact that there are digits on both my hand and foot unless of course I’ve had those digits amputated or I was born with an extra digit  or lost some a digit or two one way or another 
33. Difference and similarity are intrinsic to our experience of our own bodies 
34. In terms of the commonplace difference in height it is true that some people are taller than other people and some people are shorter than other people and ordinarily there is no confusion between us about this 
35. For most commonplace differences such as height there is no intrinsic or internal or inside reason why one particular characteristic of a difference is better or more significant than another particular characteristic of a difference e.g. there is no intrinsic reason why being tall is better than being short or why being short is better than being tall except as defined by context and functioning in that context 
36. Physically I have a bone structure and body that is generally larger than that of other people around me and that has generally meant that I am also physically stronger than most other people around me which means from a young age I have had the experience of  being able to lift and shift and open things other people have more difficulty lifting, shifting or opening – being physically bigger than other people also means that I experience more difficulty getting into or through or out of confined spaces such as the narrow openings common in caving or getting into and out of a roof space and moving freely in a hole or a well 
37. Being raised on a market garden/ dairy farm in Western Australia meant that my physical strength was an asset – I could physically do things other people found more difficulty doing – I could bag and carry manure more quickly and easily than my brother and my cousins and I could work alongside my father at a younger age. 
38. My father–in–law was a relatively small and finely built man with narrow shoulders and hips – he was a caver and integral to the exploration of the vast underground cave systems in the South East of South Australia and under the Nullarbor Plain – he appeared to have no fear and could wriggle in and out of the most confined spaces underground – I think he had great difficulty understanding my fear of such spaces and in particular my fear of being trapped in a confined space. The truth is we were different in this regard and we are all different like this in so many ways 
39. How humans process difference – what humans make of difference – the meaning they ascribe to difference – is central to being human and it is central to how humans interact with each other. 
40. Is this inequality? The fact that my foot is different to my hand does not make them unequal. The fact that my hand and foot are similar in that both have digits does not make them equal. 
41. Difference and similarity are not better or worse or good and bad or unequal and equal or right or wrong 
42. Analogy exists and is literally true. Analogy is the (not unique) human ability to  determine that something is like something else – by that I mean the human ability and capacity for analogy making is literally true – we have the capacity as humans to take something that is literally true like a difference and analogise this difference into something that is not true 
43. The most common analogy for difference is to say that such and such a difference is similar to or like a difference encountered in the natural world such as the difference between the size of two rocks 
44. Symmetry & complementarity 
45. Distance & closeness 
46. Symmetrical relationship between difference & its analogy. Difference & analogy compete over reality & the truth – the analogy wants to be true & real 
47. Complementary relationship between difference & it’s analogy > the analogy complements the difference & helps explain & make sense of the difference & does not compete over reality & the truth – the analogy is constrained from being too real 

• Symptoms appear out of the turmoil between difference and its analogies 

• Difference is collective 
• Analogy is individual and collective 
• How does a problem emerge? 
• Individual thinking – giving up 
• Cause & effect thinking 

• Trauma reduction 
• Toxic relationship  
• Wide angle lens horizontally & vertically  
• Family of origin 
• Relationship between hope & agency 

• Agency and hope 
• Courage to say “no” to a child 
• Maintenance of hope but what is hope? – hope suggests there is a future that time future exists – but the future is in our individual and collective imagination – hope is a metaphor 
• Genogram 
• Confusion over cause and effect 

• Differentiation 
• Inner conviction 
• Reciprocity 
• Hope keeps time alive keeps space intact 
• Linkage between symptoms, money, hope