“This is a fundamental view of the world.  It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more Coherent, and whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make.”  Christopher Alexander.

“There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.”  Saul Bellow

In the week’s wake of Supreme Court rulings that eroded the wall between church and state, stripped women of their right to choose in private,  freed men (yes, 98% are men) to carry in public, and emasculated experts in governmental agencies, I’ve been thinking about coherence.  How do you take away a state’s right to regulate guns on one day and then empower states to regulate a woman’s reproductive rights on the next.  It may be congruent, but it’s clearly not coherent.  Congruent, in that it conforms with ideological identification, but not coherent in that it is neither logical nor consistent. 

Serendipitously, as I was contemplating this conundrum, I came across a distinctive and tone-perfect column in the NYT by Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, entitled the Founders Bequeathed us Something Radical.  In this brilliantly crafted article, Walker discusses the importance of holding two contradictory constructs in our minds at the same time – the idea of America and the reality of America.  He writes “Our sense of who we are, our very identity as Americans, feels assaulted and violated. Amid profound, painful regression on issue after issue, we are left gasping for breath.”  Walker concludes the piece by referencing Langston’s Hughes iconic poem detailing the grim truth about the lack of coherence between our actions and stated ideals.  I highly recommend reading both the article and poem. 

In the opening quote of this post, the late Christopher Alexander, a world-renowned architect from Berkeley, speaks directly to the importance of coherence – seeing everything in the context of the whole.  He designed buildings with this idea in mind, but also viewed everything in life as having its place in the web of nature.  For me, this idea of seeing the wholeness of everything is clarifying, compelling, and more complete than seeing things in isolation.  It speaks to the difference between seeing things independently  vs. interdependently. 

The idea can be applied to architectural design as well as to culture change in organizations, communities and the world as a whole.  You can’t create a culture in isolation.  It’s imperative to repair and restore the larger world around each culture.  In my experience with corporate culture change, for example, it’s possible to build productive sub-cultures within an organization that may last for a short time, but if the larger environment surrounding the subgroup doesn’t change, it’s difficult to sustain the kind of culture you aimed to create.

Emily Mandel depicts this idea in her profoundly prescient book, Station Eleven, published in 2015.  Mandel describes the days and years after a raging pandemic that led to civilization’s collapse.  She tells the story of a nomadic group of actors roaming scattered outposts and risking everything for art and humanity.  In this dark novel, Mandel paints a picture of a world without internet, TV, news, phones, or electricity.   What struck me about the book was how quickly life could change from a world of abundant access and knowledge to a news dessert – disconnected from the larger world.   The stark comparison between the world in which we currently live and the bleak realities described in the book made we wonder how and why so many people have squandered the opportunity to learn as much as possible from multiple sources of data that currently exist.  I also marveled at how quickly people retreated into their little tribes in search of safety and belonging.  After the collapse, life immediately reverted and regressed to the Dark Ages.  Reconciliation among the tribes became increasingly difficult in a depleted, violent and news-free environment.  There was no way to discover the truth of science, history or current affairs. 

Connecting Mandel’s picture with some of the points in Darren Walker’s article, it seems to me that the road to reconciliation has to pass through the town of Truth.  What’s disturbing and disheartening is that so many people have chosen to take a wide detour around this town.  As much as I would prefer that it wasn’t true, I believe reconciliation is practically impossible unless all parties are willing to gather in the town of Truth – or at least somewhere close to it.  That simply isn’t the case in today’s overly-identified, independently-oriented, ideologically-polarized, violently-inclined world. 

I’m afraid a good share of the reason for these truth detours or the simple unwillingness to inquire and explore, is our pursuit of Congruence.  Congruence poses challenges for me because I’m still pursuing an image of myself as a fit 40 year old person in the body of an orthopedically challenged 78 year old.  The allure of my fantasies runs up against the realities of my limitations and my truth.  Oh, how I wish this allure weren’t so broadly adopted in the broader world. 

The pursuit of congruence manifests in several ways.  Think of the class clown who thrived on the attention his behaviors elicited in sixth grade, but who now looks foolish at forty pursuing attention in the same ways in conditions that have dramatically changed.  Or what about the person who is willing to drink poison in a religious cult (literally or metaphorically) in order to maintain congruence with cult values and the comfort that comes from feeling a sense of belonging, safety, certainty, and superiority.  Or Putin.  I wonder how much of his unprovoked aggression in Ukraine was driven by his pursuit of congruence with the image he holds of Russia as regional power entitled to imperial dominance. 

In short, it seems to me that the pursuit of congruence is in conflict with the pursuit of coherence.  Congruence has to do with identity whereas coherence deals with ideas.  Congruence becomes a problem when it is motivated by ideological identification.  In my mind, coherence is the goal – especially when it is built in the context of wholeness on the foundation of truth.  

How do we establish coherence in spite of our Quixotic pursuits of congruence?   How do we create a unified whole when we find ourselves in an environment of conflicting truths, myths, and lies?

Saul Bellow suggests “there is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.”   I share this painful longing.  How I wish this longing were more broadly embraced.

I wish we could find harmony and coherence in our wholeness as individuals, organizations, states, and nations.  If we can develop harmony among our physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs, perhaps we can become more coherent as individuals.  If we can create harmony in our organizations among the discord caused by conflicting demands and priorities, perhaps we can become more coherent as organizations.  If we can find harmony among the many tribes in our communities, perhaps we can reach agreement on solutions that benefit all.  If we can find harmony among our red and blue states, maybe we can paint a picture that works for the whole.  If we can find harmony among the countries around the globe, perhaps we can build an interdependent world that works for everyone.  If we can let go of our pathological pursuits for ideological congruence, perhaps we can create a coherent worldview.  May it be so.