The ♥-of-Care of the Life-Path of Organizations' Double-Spiral-Antenarrative choices through Landscapes

Essay by David M. Boje Ph.D.

January 22, 2012; Revised Dec 3, 2012

What is ANTENARRATIVE?

Vita Resume of publications | See Antenarrative Blog

Return to main site

www.digits.net

What life-path are people in an organization on through the environs? Is it one the people in them collectively freely choose an upward-spiral path of the ♥-of-Care for the planet? Are they conforming, trying to be average, just pulled-along on a downward-spiral path without reflexivity? How can a downward spiral path co-exist with an upward-spiral path? These are the key questions that makes spiral-antenarrative important to the future of the planet.

ABSTRACT

Storytelling is a way to make sense of the life-path, a series of episodes an organization is on through its environmental landscape. The spiraling path an organization is the here-and-now is already informed by its future and is 'ante' to the past and present. What the organization is doing now is projecting a possible future (already ahead-of-itself) by strategic choice of processes (tasks, activities, etc.). My own work is on 'spiral-antenarratives' where the future is antecedent (or 'ante') to the past and present. What I call the 'antenarrative' has a double meaning of 'ante' as 'before' and a 'bet' about the future life-path (Boje, 2001, 2008, 2011, 2012). Some of those processes are objectification of things into objects or objectifying the subjective processes through acts of reification. These objectifying processes and the reification are the usual linear- and cyclical-antenarrative projecting. Instead of the ordinary clock time of past-Present-future, where the here-and-now is the most 'real,' there is in what I call 'ontological storytelling' the more radical time ordering of Future-past-present in the spiral- and rhizomatic antenarratives. The purpose of this essay is to look at nonlinear and noncyclical life-paths with a ♥-of-Care that is the radical temporal ordering of Future-Past-Present that I find in Heideggerian ontology of spiral- and rhizomatic-antenarrating. My contribution is to bring ontology and storytelling together, in what I am calling 'ontological storytelling inquiry into antenarratives. Heidegger's later philosophical work develops the inner heart-space, which I am calling here, the '♥-of-Care'.

Introduction

According to Anthropological News (2012), "North Americans in the early 21st century, it may be argued, are the most wasteful people anywhere and anytime." According toEdward Humes (2012, as cited in Antropological News):

"Americans are the most wasteful people on Earth, creating about 7.1 pounds of trash per person, per day. Some nuggets of data in his book include the following:  the yearly loads of garbage trucks in the United States would fill a line of trucks half-way to the moon; Americans create 25% of the world’s waste; more money in the United States is spent on waste management than on fire protection, parks and recreation,  libraries, and schoolbooks; Americans throw out about 60 million water bottles each day; enough aluminum is discarded by Americans each year “to rebuild the entire commercial air fleet four times over” and enough plastic wrap is thrown away every year to shrink wrap Texas."

Does the 'path' of a small or even a large business or a university have that way of Being that has a particular temporal structure? Does it have to be the case that Americans are in a downward-spiral of unsustainabile chioices, fated to be the most wasteful consumers on the planet?

TO change this we need to get out of thinking that spirals are either/or either upward or downward. We need also to get out of linear way of conceiving time itself. The ordinary way of understanding temporal structure is something that Martin Heidegger (1962/1996 BT) finds problematic because it is a linear past-preent-future conception, where the present is presumed to be the 'most real' (Cerbone, 2008: 67). For example I read in Bergson’s (1992/1932: 100-101Creative Mind), the origins of retrospective sensemaking, when asked by reporter, to foresee the future in "certain possible directions" Bergson replied:

“If I knew what was to be the great dramatic work of the future, I should be writing it.” … 
I saw distinctly that he conceived the future work as being already stored up in some cupboard reserved for possibles’ because of my long-standing relations with philosophy, I should have been able to obtain from it the key to the storehouse.

“But,” I said, “the work of which you speak is not yet possible.” – “But it must be, since it is to take place.” – “No, it is not. I grant you, at most, that it will have been possible.” “what do you mean by that? – “It’s quite simple. Let a man of talent or genius come forth, let him create a work: it will then be real, and by that very fact it becomes retrospectively or retroactively possible. … That is why I tell you that it will have been possible today, but that it is not yet so.” “You’re not serious! You are surely not going to maintain that the future has an effect upon the present, that the present brings something into the past, that action works back over the course of time and imprints its mark afterwards?”

Heidegger, on the other hand, prefers a more radical temporal ordering that is constitutive of what I will call the ♥-of-Care, as future-past-present. It is this radical temporal ordering that I want to associate with my theory of antenarratives, especially spiral- and rhizomatic-antenarratives. We can reverse the objectification processes endemic to linear- and cyclial-antenarratives with a ♥-of-Care, what Heidegger (1971 PLT: p. 128) calls moving away from "calculating consciousness towards the inner space of the heart." Ironically this is moving on a orbital life-path "toward the true interior of the heart's space" (ibid, p. 130).

What is Quantum Storytelling? 'Quantum storytelling' is defined here as an intra-activity and intra-penetration of materiality and storytelling. quantum storytelling extends the work of Karen Barad (2003: 820; 2007), a quantum physicist, to curb the linguistic turn from going too far in its dismissal of 'materiality' by calling for “mutual entailment” of materiality and discourse. Storytelling is one domain of discourse along with metaphor and trope. I have a somewhat different take than Barad, or Stand's (2012) work on 'material storytelling.' I am looking at a way of appraoching the space-time-materiality of storytelling from a 'quantum storytelling' perspective. The difference is I am taking a more pragmatist position in quantum storytelling.

For example, Ihave become an apprentice blacksmith in the past five years. I am learning about the relationship of storytelling and materiality by moving hot metal, shaping metal into artwork. See film "Quantum Storytelling: Blacksmithing Art in the Quantum Age", for the pragmatist connection see Finland Presentation on Pragmatist Storytelling Philosophy in Liquid/Quantum Modernity Nov 20 2012 pdf. The pragmatist storytelling philosophy is about moving from representationalist materiality rhetroic, beyond a social constructivist materialist rhetoric, to something more ontological, which is where Barad, Strand, and I agree: this most be something posthuman, where the humanistic ego is not the center of the storytelling. I am taking a Heideggerian and a Pragmatist (e.g. James, Burke, and for me Bakhtin) perspective.

To me this is not merely retrospective sensemaking, but is the future-past-present conception of temporal order. I want to understand the future of blacksmithing, the survival of this handicraft and artcraft in late modern capitalism. It is the particularity of the temporal ordering (future-past-present) in the ♥-of-Care that forms the basis of my research question: what kinds of temporal structure is constitutive of the path of a blacksmith artist's small business? The ordinary kind of temporal structure (past-present-future) assumes the clock sense of time. Blacksmithing processes constitute a reversal of ordinary modern technological processes to the thingness of things because of the♥-of-Care that pervades mastering the black arts.

The main contribution of this essay is to balance retrospective sensemaking (Weick, 1995) with a prospective sensemaking (Boje, 2008). History is not merely a retrospection of the past by organization participants, but is also something that that is futurally informing how processes are being done and why they are being done. In this radical temporal structure of future-past-present, the organization's strategic possibilities do not lie in some as yet unrealized future, but are instead embedded in what the past (what the organization has been doing and how the environmental landscape already has channeled pathways), and in the present (what pathways an organization is caught up in here-and-now).

The structure of the essay begins with a brief overview of the four antenarrative, then show how they relate to the ♥-of-Care, several modes of storytelling inquiry (epistemic, ontico, & ontological), the seven D's of Situation analysis. and the fourfolds (Earth, Sky, Mortality, & Divinities). Then there is a section on the relationship of storytelling and efficacy, in preparation for an essay that Steve Elias and I are working on as a submission to a journal. Along the way, examples from my study of blacksmith artist's small businesses are made, including my own blacksmithing metal sculpting.

Four Types of Antenarrative. The first two types are still trying to conquer the great divide along the epistemic-ontical: linear-antenarratives of a beginning-middle-end life-path, and the cyclical-antenarrative along the recurring stages, in sequence, that recur over and over just the same, without any significant difference these first two antenarratives follow the general linear model of time as past-Present-future. The linear- or the cyclic-antenarrative, of a path that repeats the same pattern over and over. There are two other types of antenarratives that are thoroughly ontological: spiral- and rhizomatic-antenarratives. The cyclic-antenarrative can veer away from repeating sameness, and become a spiral-antenarrative. Sometimes this is by chance, and other times, on purpose in-order-to break out of the rut.

Figure 1- Spiral-Antenarrative of Choice-Points of Paths to Take or Not to Take

♥-of-Care and the Spiral-antenarrative: The spiral-antenarrative processes of the thingness of things in the path of caring, of the widest "orbit of the whole draft" (PLT, 1971, 130) turns to the unshieldedness of the inner ♥-space of our worldly existence: "inward the true interior of the heart's space" (p. 130). The spiral-antenarrative is a primordial path from birth through death, downward "where all ground breaks off- into the abyss" (PLT, 1971: 119), and upwards, into that end of this life, and into the after life. The above figure integrates Heidegger's (PLT, 1971: 128) ideas of a draft-center as attracting our path the the center, within the entire Being-in-the-world of the spherical forces of the whole integral draft space-time. In the figure the dotted blue paths are paths not taken. The black spiral is the path taken. The vertical blue arrow is the draft center attraction of the spiral-antenarrative. The other attractor is the whole sphere (space-time) forces of integral draft. These define the simultaneous forces of the spiral-sphere. The spiral-antenarrative activities and processes are in the "sphereicity of the unifying" a sort of lightning" (PLT, 1971: p. 123). This is the draft attraction of place. The well-roundedness of the spiral-sphere can be "thought of as the Being of beings in the sense of the unconcealing-lightning unifying" (ibid, p. 123).When we are on the path of the ♥-space we are on the widest possible orbit, in the 'Open' and in 'unshieldedness.' . We can therefore conceive of the spiral-antenarrative's orbits (the twirls) as attracted to the center draft (at the core) and to the "whole integral draft" of the "whole of the Open" through which the spiral-antenarrative moves (PLT, 1971: p. 128). The widest orbit (twirl) of the spiral -antenarratives "becomes present in the heart's interior space", or as I am calling it, the ♥-space. "The widest orbit is the wholeness of the whole draft of attraction: (ibid, p. 124). "When we are touched from out of the widest orbit, the touch goes to our very nature" (ibid, p. 125), in the"globe of Being" (p. 124). Our spiraling-antenarrative through the vast "outer space" with all its "sidereal distances" is not as vast as the depths of the inner and invisible ♥-space. This is not meant to be narrative-representation (epistemic) or some calculating measures of what is present-at-hand in living story relationships (ontico). Rather it is the ♥-of-Care of the thingness of things. "the overflow beyond number arise in the presence, in the inner and invisible region of the heart" (PLT, 1971: 128). This Open ♥-space reveals our life-path in world inner realm. Heidegger who is it that touches us directly in the widest (spiral orbit)? "What is it that touches us directly out of the widest orbit?" (PLT, 1971: 126). ♥-space means here, to turn into the Open, in unshieldedness, so that what touches us, touches 'who we are' (ibid, p. 125). We can choose not to be in ♥-space, and that is defined as parting against the whole draft, and against the Open. We can block-off from the ♥-space. This is most often through the objectification of things, through some sort of technological process: "parting against the pure draft: (p. 125) into the constancy of processes producing products and consumption by objectivity and calculating.

Technology "establishes all things as producible in the process of production; it also delivers the products of production by means of the market" (PLT, 1971: 114). The result is the life-path and the thingness of the things dissolve outside of care. Instead of the thingness of things the processes are parting against the Open. The linear- and cyclical-antenarratives, in particular block the life-path and endanger Nature (human, animal & plant Nature).

Not all processes art this way. And here we are concerned to inverse the parting from the Open, and find ways of process that are in the ♥-space of the ♥-of-Care. The parting from the Open, is a choice of uncaring "the inversion of the parting against the Open" (p. 122), and is "outside all caring" (p. 121).The ♥-space lets the authentic path be unconcealed (unveiled, disclosed) when we are open to the widest orbit, turning into the Open, along a spiral path that has choice-points.

Three Constitutive Aspects of ♥-of-Care

♥-of-Care. There are three constitutive aspects of the ♥-of-Care that cannot be studied without positing temporal conceptions. Here it it is defined a Being-there-ahead-of-itself-in-♥-of-Care. It is always on the way to Being and is understood as a futural possibility rather than a present actuality. It is meant to be prospective sensemaking processes that are constituted by spiral- and rhizomatic-antenarratives for-the-sake-of-the-future in current processes, rather than the usual linear- or cyclic-antenarrative of some future actuality (i.e. end state, next stage of the cycle, and so forth) that in retrospective sensemaking is a recurrence of the past. Heidegger (BT) uses the term 'projecting." The organization by its processes is doing a storytelling (without words) by its activities, noises, and gestures that is always "projecting itself" or "pressing into possibilities" which for me are indicative of spiral- and rhizomatic-antenarratives in those ongoing processes that "has a kind of ineliminable futural dimension" (Cherbone, 2008: 59). ♥-of-Care is an umbrella term I am using because the three German words Heidegger uses have a meaning lost in translation to English. Fursorge (solicitude), Besorgen (concern) and Sorge (care) (see more on this in Cherbone, 2008: 57).

Instead of conceiving of a spiral-antenarrative as either upward or downward, we can look at the spiral as being buffeted by both updraft and downdraft forces. In the next figure the orange arrows are updrafts in the whole sphericity of Being of beings. The red arrow at center is a down draft, attracting tighter and tighter orbits as the heart departs from the most open orbits, and settles in tighter and tighter orbits, approaching the Abyss of oblivion.

Figure 2 - Spiral-Antenarrative in the Whole Sphericity of Updraft and Downdraft Forces

At critical 'turning points' the ♥ can venture into the open orbit, or head by will and self-assertion into the "other orbit" the center attracted into the forces of the downdraft. In this downdraft,t he logic of calculation and representation (the ontic and epistemic) takes over from ♥-of-care. In the outer wide orbits, the ♥-ventures, in wider and wide orbits. Yet, at the widest orbit, is another choice point, where instead of venturing into even wider orbits of the spirial-antenarrative, a choice can be willed to enter the downdraft spiral forces, with the logic of calculation taking over, and the sorts of representational-narratives taking over the ♥-space. In sum, there are two choice points depicted: one is just as the abyss draws one near and nearer, and lightening lights up a seeing of alternative pathways drawn into the wider orbits of the updrafts. The other choice point is when gliding in the spiraling paths of the updraft leads one to "parting against the pure draft" (PLT, p. 125), and the calculating and representational takes over. The outer orbits know nothing of such calculation and representational logics. The two choice-points depicted (abyss and ♥-space) are transformations, from positive to negative, or negative to positive. This is not positive thinking. Rather it is a restorying, a transmutation by "an invisible of the heart" (PLT, p. 134) where "only a position can correspond to it, never a negating" (PLT, p. 124). In the downdraft ("the other draft") is "the other side of the whole draft of the Open" (updraft forces) and what was negative now seems quite positive (PLT 124-5). "To turn into the Open is to renounce giving a negative reading to that which is" (PLT, p. 125). Yet, it seems that only in the encounters where lightening strikes so a seeing occurs do we sense the whole draft of the Open, and move away from the Abyss, or keep the ♥-space open to wider orbits of the spiral-antenarrative, and all its ♥-ventures. Ventures of the ♥and ventures of self-asserting purpose by calculation and objectification seem to be the attraction of the center downdraft, drawn away from the whole integral updraft forces. Here an example is useful.

A Case Example of Double-Spiral-Antenarrative

Figure 3 - Up and down forces in the same Double-Spiral-Antenarrative - Figure by Ruby Galindo Nov 2012

On November 30th 2012, we got the news. New Mexico State Univeristy (NMSU) took an up-draft, and our outer orbit took an upswing, Green pathway shot past Silve Star to a Gold Star rating (the Green path) and we are flushing out some major unstainability (the Brown path). Ruby Galindo, a student in my Mgt 448 class, interviewed me about the evolution of the sustainaiblity-spiral, its up and down paths being counter-forces in the same spiral-antenarrative. Ths is a double-spiral, not the usual either up or down spiral approach. Ruby and Iplotted out the key turning points in each orbit, how they moves in an up-spiral or down-spiral within the same spiral. Spirals cannot exist as either/or, either up-spiral or down-spiral, rather it takes both forces to have eddies. The flushing out of the down-spiral is important. It will take self-denial, a posthumanous standpoint, not the individualism of the consumerist American society egoistic narrative.

"For instance, the dedication to green causes seldom if ever goes as far as adopting an ascetic lifestyle or evn a partial self-denial" (Bauman, 2008: 42).

It is important that we do the quantum storytelling, develop and care for the history of what has happened at NMSU, and focus in on quantum amteriality, not just epistemic or empiric materialist narrative rhetoric. It takes a long time with much shaping and creating to fashion a sustainability future. A number of important sustainability events happened, beginning, from what I can sort out, in 1963, and culminating in the Gold Star being award us Nov 30th 2012 by Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). Insted of a time line, as below, the physical geometry I have in mind is more the spiral with up and down draft forces as the previous figures illustrates.

Figure 4 - Historical Timeline of Sustainability at NMSU

The linear-antenarrative time line does not depict the amplifying and counteractive forces as orbits expand and contract, nor the flushing out process, as no spiral exists with simply one force, without any counterforces. We could leave out the down-spiral counter-force, and merely create a romantic narrative of how NMSU's orbits changed for a D to C- on its Green Report Card, to a Bronze on the STARS, and shot up past Silver, to a Gold Star. A pivot directionality change, was when NMSU Signed Climate control action plan; Oct 2009 NMSU receives C- on Sustainability Report Card. Steve Loring, chair of the sustainability council, said the council is serious about the goals, and is on task to complete them by the end of the year to turn this around. ““[A new president should] make a visible, public commitment by saying ‘I think this is important,” Loring said. “Even after the calendar year, [the new president would] need to show that [the theme of sustainability] is not just a flash in the pan. One person in that position can make a difference.” It took till 2011 to move the grade to a C+. We had a lot of unsustainaiblity to flush out.

Students can make a difference. The OASIS club at NMSU, for many years worked hard to persuade the upper admministrative leaders of the university to embrace sustainability. In 2009 they succeeded in geting a President of the univeristy to sign the Talloires Commitment and declare NMSU's Year of Sustainability. On Feb. 19 2011, New Mexico State University's Faculty Senate unanimously passed a memorial to recognize the new Office of Sustainability at NMSU and support the plans and goals of the Sustainability Council. The memorial, proposition 08-10/11A, was sponsored by David Boje, in the College of Business, who authored the memorial; Read More » I actually asked a member of my department to take a break from Faculty Senate, so I could get voted in, then launch a Sustainability initiative. We made a commitment to join a more rigorous asessment group, and signed up for the Sustainability Tracking and Assessment Reporting System (STARS). We earned or Bronze Star rating in Sep 2011. Faculty working together can make a differenc,e convince an administration, its leaders to take the Green upward-spiral path.

Students can make a difference in sustainability, in geting administrative leaders on board. Students from my own Mgt448 consulting course in the Business College worked with joni newcomer (Office of Sustainaiblity, and then Chiar of Sustainability Council) to develop the Sustainability business plan, as did members of the 2011 Executive Team. In 2011 the doctoral seminar students in my systems theory course (Mgt 665) did interviews, and we co-wrote an article about the history of sustainability at our university. Aguirre, Boje, Cast, Conner, Helmuth, Mittal, Saylors, Tourani, Vendette, and Yan (2013) presented results of interviews with sustainaiblity leaders at NMSU to the then president and provost, and VP of research in May of 2011. The ♥-of-Care was key to the presentation. PREZI presentation about history of Sustainability Research at NMSU. Just observing the university, doing the interviews, fashioning a business plan, were ways of bringing about small little wow moments of change. For example, upon seeing an illustration (below), the President and Provost, reacted, "we like that, the ♥-of-Care" in the middle of sustainability. We showed how all seven goals of the university, were each one about sustainability, and we secured commitments from upper administration make a difference.

Figure 5 - ♥-of-Care for Sustainaiblity at NMSU - figure by D. Boje May 2011

It was imperiative that we expand sustainability from a business or operations efficiency (save money) standpoint to involving education in environmental sciences and environmental literacy, doing more research in sustinability, and involving the local and State community in our efforts. We had a lot to do, such as constructing databases on everything from specific courses related or focused on sustainaiblity, degree programs, majors, and minors, and a full inventory of sustainability research, both funded and non-funded. Is use my own server space, since getitng changes rapidly in the branded web spaces of the university would take longer than the year we had to make this all happen: See http://peaceaware.com/sustainability. Somehow we shaped and created destiny, and stole our future out of the grip of unsustainable fate on this planet. That is not to say we do not have fare to go. We need many more changes to move from the individualism of green rhetoric, to doing green choices in consumption, production, and literacy that make a difference.

The ♥-of-Care is neither epistemic-sesemaking-narrative nor empiricist-narrative, rather it is the ♥-of-Care of living story webs of relation to the ontological and primoridal environment. ♥-of-Care living story intra-connects the sensemaking-narrative through the spiral-antenarrative process of transformation, that is all about the bet on the future, the transformation tied to values of love for the planet, and counter-values of lust for the planet. It is not a mere sequence of years and events, it is a matter of a struggle of destiny and fate. As Bauman (2008: 39) puts it, we "shape our destinies singly, severally or all together, and only once we've run out of the resources and/or of the will needed to go on with the job of shaping and reshaping, it does turn into 'fate'." The updraft and downdraft forces can be shaped into destinies, or we can do nother and be shaped by fate. Unsustainability does not have to be the impersonal fate of human, animal, plants, rivers, oceans, and forests. We can shape and create up-spiral, and flush out unsustainaiblity in down-spiral, by making a difference individually and collectively.

In sum, ontological storytelling is a powerful way for individuals, groups, and organizations interested in sustainability to effect system change in an organization by shaping and creating up-spiral while also at the same time dealing with the down-spiral flushing out of unsustainaiblity. From this douple-spiral-antenarrative perspective, sustainability is initiated and sustained through the meaning of authentic care as participants in the process realize the potentiality-for-Being-whole-in-systemic-sustainability and confronting our own inauthentic ways of pretending sustainability is without sacrifice. Specifically, colleges are one-by-one embracing sustainability in curriculum and research, and operations and the community are involed in transforming the future of my university. The double-spiral raises interesting ontological issues for sustainability researchers, and has implications for strategy as practice.

Here we set out the future-past-present ordering: Future-Being-ahead-of-oneself, past-Being-already-in-the-world, and present-Being-toghether-witth-falling (Cerbone, 2008; Heidegger BT 1962/1996).

1. Future-Being-ahead-of-oneself: I am on a life-path that is already-ahead-of-itself. I am on the way in-the-world, to Being that possibility, rather than the actuality (present-at-hand). This is not some linear concept of time (past-Present-future), but rather a deployment along a path (for-the-sake-of; in-order-to) and the path has a directionality that I am attuned to: up, down, left, right, inward, outward, amplifying, contracting, and so forth. These are not compass directions, not measurable, calculatable directions. Being-ahead-of-itself, the life-path is a projection of nonlinear- and non-cyclical-antenarratives that I call spiral- and rhizomatic-antenarrative life-paths. I find myself in a landscape whose contour features are not of my own choosing. I have little control over the constitutive relations of the life-path. I am 'dwelling-in' the landscape, in-place. I did not choose some of the linear- and cyclical-antenarrative projections being made for this life-path. Things show up along the spiral- and rhizomatic-antenarrative life-path. I have an attunement to the life-path I find myself moving along. I have a mood (BT, 1962) of curiosity about it sometimes, and other times it all seems quite tedious repetition of stuff I care little about. These are not just my moods, but can be the mood of the institution I work in, the academy I submit papers to, and the entire cultural era of late modern capitalism. Heidegger (1962/1966 BT) uses the term 'Befindlishkeit' which has no translation into English (Stambaugh 1996 uses the term 'attunement; while Macquarrie and Robinson translate this to be 'mood.' The moods are not meant to be cognitions or feelings (epistemic) and are not just one person's mood, but can be the mood of an historical era, of an institution or organization. Mood are not meant to be psychological (epistemic) points-of-view, but are explicitly defined as ontological standpoints. I assume these moods affect that a process is. The organization finding itself in an environmental landscape Being-already trodden and channeled with paths that show up in relations already-in-place. The shape of the environmental landscape and organization finds itself in can have already well channelled paths despite the many technological innovations in play over the course of an organization's and its environs existence. 'Befindlishkeit' (moods/attunements) an organization finds itself in are never something people in organizations are choosing from some "moodless standpoint" (Cerbone, 2008: 60). Moods color how organization processes show up to participants. The moods (or attunements) I have been focusing on include:

   Curiosity
   Tranquility
   Ambiguity
   Nullity
   Anxiety (angst)
   Turbulence
   Involvements
   Alienation
   Uncanniness

2. Past-Being-already-in-the-world: The Being-already-in-the-world means the life-path moves through a referential totality that is ongoing activity with directionality and deployments, most of which people working in organizations did not create, but participate in, and are complicit in. Interpretation is no exclusively or primarily the linguistic activity of storytelling. An historical era of an organization such as Disney can become a mood, the past-Being-already-in-the-world. Moods can be related to storytelling, and understood through the storytelling. There are non-linguistic ways of storytelling, such as through the stylistics of the architecture, the kinds of process activities that in play. Organizations are always already situated in some ongoing antenarrative processes. Linear- and cyclic-antenarratives correspond to the past, where as the the spiral-and rhizomatic-antenarratives correspond to the future-Being-ahead-of-itself. Thrownness is Heidegger's (1962/1996 BT) term for ways of past-Being-already-engaged-In and oriented to in ways that in our discussion, an organization had little or no say in. The point is that some landscape already have furrowed channels that are well-shaped. The shape of that landscape existence its past-orientation, at the same time, presents itself in the responsive strategic choices, fitting with this past,this path, this specific strategic process, that the organization finds itself to be already-in, this thrownness.
3. Present-Being-together-with: Breakdowns is not the only occasion for interpretation and understanding the precesses I have fallen into. In the breakdowns that happen to tools (equipment) and disruptions to processes I take for granted, I zero in on some dysfunction (an excess or deficiency) and I fuss, fiddle, paw, correct, set right, improve, worsen, round out things ready-at-hand that were interrupted (Heidegger, BT 1996: 139/148-9). This is what Heidegger (BT 1962/1996) calls 'falling.' I am absorbed in the processes of metal sculpting, the activity o of hammering on the anvil, caught up in activities of making a new and different wind sculpture. It is one that is powered by a propeller turning in the wind, to move the legs of a metal horse to the rhythm of a cantor. I am caught up staring at our Arabian and Quarter horses to see what body shapes and moving rhythms are present. This is not a free-standing slice of time, not an ontically measurable and calculatable objective-time. All storytelling can not be put into words (spoken or written). I can point to a broken tool in my blacksmith workshop and be storytelling without words, with a few gestures I communicate to an apprentice or master blacksmith that something is amiss, not deployed and unhandy (not-ready-to-hand). For example, the peen hammer I picked up has some chips from the last job, some imperfections by the hammering are passed on to the metal sculpture. I point to the hammer, and scowl. And the storytelling discourse is not reliant on linguistic communication. There is a ping sound that I know is hammering of hot metal on the anvil, and another ping noise, a sort of 'thud' and the novices and masters present, know that something is amiss. We all scowl, and wonder if the piece is damaged, cracked, because metal was hammered when too cold. Rather it is 'duration' a temporal span that is beyond objective-time. It is also beyond subjective-time, the mindful cognitive and thinking or feeling that is the epistemic inquiry obsession. Absorption in falling to the present-Being-together-with the horses in the the here-and-now situation can serve to distract me from the strategic task of confronting and understanding my blacksmith organization's own Being that corresponds to its path to the future by being too absorbed into what the workshop is doing here-and-now. My sensemaking attention can be too scattered in the three temporal directions: future, present, and past. The strategic risk is becoming to absorbed in the emergent-present, the staring at the horses, that that spectacle takes too much attention away from future and past. In taking in fragments of emergence, here-and-now, I start falling into the pull of novelty without any depth of understanding of future or past.

This ♥-of-Care for therefore the ontological Life-Path is alongside the epistemic and ontico paths. Epistemology and ontical processes of production are both "parting against the Open" (PLT, 1971: 128). We can reverse the calculating reason and calculating arithmetic measurement by ♥-of-Care, from "calculating consciousness towards the inner space of the heart" (ibid).

Three Modes of Storytelling Inquiry

Figure 6 - The Three Modes of Storytelling Inquiry

The ♥-of-Care is all about the ontological storytelling life-path people in their organizations are moving along through the world, its environmental landscape. Storytelling is constituted by three modes of inquiry: epistemic, ontico, and ontological. My contention is the bulk of organization strategy and management and organization theory is focused on the epistemic-ontical, and remains blind to the ontological ♥-of-Care.

Figure 7 - The Three Modes of Storytelling Inquiry and Ontology, Ontical and Ontological

Strategy narrative work tends to be absorbed in epistemic. Epistemic-narrative is about the past (retrospective sensemaking of the past; backward-looking) and is subjective, abstract, and thematizing (i.e. mind, thinking, feeling, or universalistic in Kantian sense). The past-Being-already-in-the-environment is important. Organizations without a sense of tradition and history, repeat mistakes.

Living stories seem to be more ontic, they get objectified, being-together in webs of relationship, in the immediate present. Ontico-living-story-webs are present-oriented, in the here-and-now (present-at-hand), and objective, measurable, calculatable, and relational constructions of conforming to the they-self (i.e. empirical comparisons to Others).

There are four antenarratives. In this theory of storytelling, antenarratives operate in-between the Epistemic, Ontic, and Ontological, inter-connecting them differently, in different processes. Thelinear- and cyclic-antenarrative inter-relate the epistemic and ontic. The rhizomatic inter-connects the ontic and ontolgoical, and the spiral-antenarrative inter-connects the epistemic and the ontological living story web.

Antenarratives across the epistemic-Ontico are in pursuit of healing the Cartesian divide between the Subject and Object, Mind and Body. The ontological inquiry (Heidegger, BT 1962/1996) is about the future Being-ahead-of-itself in what I call a ♥-of-Care for one's ownmost life-path that is not along the Subject-Object great divide.

Figure 8 – the Path Taken and the Null Paths Not-Taken are Coexistent

The nullity (BT, 1962) is a set of paths taken and not taken. The antenarrative directionalities are quite different life-paths. There is a technologically-aware and an unaware path through life. There are single paths through life, straight line (linear) paths,  paths repeating the same recurrent cycle of actions (cyclic), day-after-day, and also the spiral-paths where each twirl is somewhat different than the one before and the one just ahead.

Eleven D's for Finding the Life-path in each Situation

The ♥-of-Care three aspects Being-ahead-of-oneself, Being-already-in-the-world, and Being-together-with -- is about fore-caring for the life-path. There are concepts in Heidegger (BT 1962, 1996) that in English, all start with a D, so I call them the Seven D's. They are aspects of the ontological Situation, and being attuned to authentic and inauthentic life-path choices one makes in Situations.

 

D1: Directionality – As the authentic life-path is disclosed, the directionality (upward and downward, left and right, inward and outward, contracting and expanding directions) becomes more apprehendable.  There are also null paths (paths not taken) that are co-existential to the path taken. These null paths form opportunity costs or foreshadows, as well as side-shadows, and back-shadows (to use Morson’s 1994 shadow terminology).

D2: Datability – With disclosure and directionality, certain events become datable as meaningful, important, and essential to understanding the course the life-path will take, is on now, and has already taken. This is not sequential from past-present-future, but is rather future-present-past, and therefore not a chronology that is linear or cyclical, but is the datability of spiral-, and/or rhizomatic-antenarratives. Datability refers to forehaving the future, and to foreseeing the future ahead-of-itself, as well as fore-structuring, and fore-caring about that future.  Datability is a form of not only meaningfulness of events that are dwelling-in place, have threshold, etc., but are answers to what, how, what, and who questions.

D3: Duration - This is not clocktime or calendar time, rather it is thos litel wow moments, those turning points in the spiral (up or down) that are from birth to dieath of an individual or organization's life path. It is not Bergsonian Now. (Threshold) For Heidegger, “The [monstrous] ‘now’ is not pregnant with the ‘not-yet-now,’ but the Present arises from the future in the primordial ecstatial unity of the temporality of temporality” (Heidegger, BT 1962: 479, bracketed additions, mine).

D4: Disclosability – To disclose an authentic life-path means to be able to remove the concealments, obscurities, leveling, averageness, conformities, and effacements of particularities of the authentic life-path which are engulfed by inauthentic life-path choices.

D5: Destining - To destine is to shape and create choice points in the path, rather than go in the fated (helpless) direction, and take whatever comes one's way as the only way.

D6: Deployment – With the disclosability, directionality, and datability, there is as well the Deployability, defined as in-order-to, for-the-sake-of, usability and serviceability of tools and equipment layout, the processes of making Things, caring-for-Things, using-Things that are ready-to-hand in a workshop or small business and its environs. Deployment of the worldhood of the environing world, the ‘in order to’ (Heidegger, HCT 1992: 171). The new mode of ‘in-Being’ in which is deployed in aroundness is a constitutive feature of worldhood. It enables antenarrative ‘bets’, ‘befores’, ‘antecedents’ and ‘anteriority’ of caring. I.e. the various modes of antenarrative possibility characterizing caring in their deployment.

D7: Dwelling-In is defined as the ‘place’ of the blacksmithing, places for tools and equipment, places for materials, places that are essential parts of a master artist’s blacksmithing world. Another example, dwelling in the place of our university in the whole world of sustainabile and unsustainable universities. Dwelling-in-place, or dwelling-with something, something encountered in Heidegger (1962) becomes the acquaintance of the ‘Being-there’ of a caring-encounter with particular environments: work environment, supplier environment, equipment environment, consumption environment, welfare environment, and Nature environment.

D8: Deseverance - Or joining-together of spaces, times, materialities near and far away. The 1996 translation of Being and Time, calls it ‘de-distancing’ and the 1962 version translates it as “desevering”. Heidegger (BT 1962, 1996) gives the example of radio as de-severing the near and far, collapsing distances, but now there is the Internet, the cell phone, and other sorts of equipment that desevers space, time, and matter.

D9: Drafts - Heidegger writesof up drafts and down drafts. These drafts affect the spiral-antenarrative, the ups and downs in the double-spiral, as illustrated above.

D10: Dispersion - In the blacksmithing studies few smiths consolidate or let go of a process. Only a few remove processes to mae room for more sustainabile ones, flush them out in the double-spiral (the brown path) in-order-to (deploy) more green processes.

D11: Detaching - To follow a more athentic path means to be able to move away form imitation of other's styles and develop your own. In the university example, it means moving away from imitating the they-self of other universities doing consumerist approaches that are unsustainabile for the planet, and insted choosing a new destiny (destining) a path that flushes out the consumerist life style and unsustainable production processes, moves from Yuppie green imitation into a more authentic Being-in-the-world. Few enterprises can detach from they-self of consumerist wasteful imitiation. The dominant consumerist narrative is too powerful for most to adopt a posthumanist life path.

In sum five of the D’s – Deployment, dwelling, de-severance, dispersion, and detaching – are all about space that is concernful in quantum storytelling. There are three other D’s about time – datability, duration, and destining. Three – directionality, disclosability and drafts get at both space-time.

These D’s are constitutive of Being-in-the-world of blacksmithing art or of green and brown double-spiral university that is concernful and caring.

Next, Iw at to look at the Fourfolds.

 

The Fourfolds: Earth, Sky, Humanity, and Divinities

These life-path choices occur in what Heidegger (PLT, 1971) called the fourfolds of life existence: Earth, Sky, Mortality, and Divinities. ♥-of-care for dwelling-in the fourfold means to ‘spare’ and ‘save’ the natural temporal cycles and spirals of the fourfold by being ethically-answerable for our activities and technology processes.  Heidegger (QCT, 1977; PLT, 1971) makes the point that modern technology can be dangerous to the fourfold temporal cycles and processes of the natural world as we create artificial ones.

1. Earth: Technology enframes earth, by articulation and activity, into merely a vast system of resources. In blacksmithing, pre-modern smith-artists produced art-Things that are particularly unique and different: no two metal sculptures are the same. Things deprived of particularity become interchangeable, standard production systems of sameness to secure many ends (purposes & needs). The blacksmith shop turns into one more factory producing sameness. These sorts of technological antenarrative cycles transform production and consumption into unreasonable and excessive demands on Earth through enframement. Everything for the linear- or cycle-time becomes merely a resource, without any enchanting essence. Technology can deprive ‘places’ of their particularity, making anywhere and everywhere available  by transportation, Internet, TV, cellphone, SKYPE, and so forth, so that deseverance of distance and time, make nearness and farness desevered. And capitalist forms of organization make McDonald’s, Starbuck, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and so on, everywhere and anywhere until “there is no longer any particular place to be” (Cerbone, 2008: 161).

2. Sky:  Our human existence is grounded under the earth-sky, and inflected with temporal cycles and spirals.  I once did blacksmithing under the sky, in the seasons, in the day and ne a shop with four walls, a roof, and a stove.  At night, it is easy to see when the metal turns the same red-orange color as the fire. To dwell-in ‘places’ under the sky ‘is’ to be involved in the temporal cycles and spirals. To dwell-in technology is to flick a switch to turn night into day, push a button on an air conditioner to make summer into winter, and otherwise use technology to obliterate or efface the temporal cycles and spirals. “For example, do I ‘fail to dwell’ every time I turn on the light in my study after dark?” (Cerbone, 2008: 161).  Do I fail to dwell when I turn on the outdoor lights and ignore the starry night sky? Living in an “artificially lit environment” is a form of disenchantment (Cerbone, 2008: 163). The use of ‘energy’ that comes from the grid means coal or oil, propane, or nuclear materials are mined, transported by truck, rail, ship, or by pipelines over vast stretches that destroys land- and sea- and air-scape. I rarely pay attention to how turning the key in my car, starts an engine that relies on mining the earth, and sends toxic fumes into the sky. My inattentive ways are testimony to how I live under the sky.  I live in artificiality, blocking out the starry sky, the season climates, the temporal cycles and spirals fade from my awareness.

3. Mortality: Technology overcomes the temporal cycles and spirals of not only day and night, and the seasonal changes, but as well those of sickness and health. That said I have a finite existence as a blacksmith. With the click of a mouse, the turn of a key, for flick of the light switch I opt out of the natural cycles and spirals. I flick a switch and turn on the light, I turn a switch to start the power-hammer, and I step on a lever to put more air into the forge-fire. I only use the hand-billows, and move outdoors, to impress the consumers at the annual Renaissance Faire. I live in consumption and production cycles and spirals that are reordering not only premodern blacksmithing, but life itself, so that it no longer marked by natural stages or events. There is an erasure of the natural cycles and spirals, as I enter cyber- and virtual-ones. 

4. Divinities: “Technology fosters the illusion that human beings are masters of the earth” (Cerbone, 2008: 163). Blacksmithing under the sky, and “before divinities” (PLT, 1971: 150) accommodates natural temporal cycles and spirals that have significance to a premodern blacksmith. How does our use of technology become legitimate or rationalized by our storytelling ways to enframe the Earth for our own dominion by objectifying it, redefining it, as mere ‘resources’?  How do we become ‘human resources’ and ‘managed and administered resources’ in organizations?  The cycles and spirals of life are about birth, maturity, sickness-and-health, and life-and-death of a loved one. There are ways of storytelling (talking and acting) that make blacksmithing spiritually meaningful (Boje, 2008, 2011). There is a particular way the metal changes color with the fir, the way it sizzles when quenched in water, the way the air intensifies the heat of the coals, and the way angels, animal spirits, gods, and goddesses watch over the smith.

 

Figure 9 - Life-path choices

Do I follow an existent path-left, change course to one to the right, or change to one by keeping-straight-ahead instead of following a curve?  The seasons each have their own nature, but the use of technology changes our relationship to spring, summer, fall, and winter. We are less and less influenced by the natural temporal cycles and spirals, and out-of-touch with the ultimate primordial finitude of life. Choices of directionality, under the sky, in Earths cycles and spirals, is neither a compass direction, nor an up or down one, nor just the finite past or finite future. Rather, there is fourfold directionality: Earth, Sky, Mortality, and Divinities. The spiritual fold ways of storytelling, about meaningful spiritual-things (angles, gods, goddesses, ancestors, spirit animal guides) is only one direction. Religiosity is different than the spiritual direction. Other spiritual directions are the birth of a child, the death of a brother or sister, how the starry night looks at full moon light.  This is a very different fold than the enframing by technology, economics, managerial ism, marketing or some other administrative ordering.  Heidegger (BT, 1962; PLT, 1971) fashions an alternative transcendental to the epistemic one that Kant conceived. For Heidegger, spirituality is grounded in the oneness of the fourfold dimensions and the unity of the world with all its realms.

Figure 8 - Upward life-path

Heidegger (BT, 1962) makes the point that the path can turn upwards or plunge downward. If path-directionality is upward and downward, left and right, then these are not compass directions, but rather onto logically meaningful ones. The up-, down-, and inwards-, and the left-, right-, and middle-paths that are blossoming, dissolving, in the primordial finitude of mortality, under the sky, on the Earth (all its species), with Divinities all around. One fold leads to the other three folds. Sky envelops the Earth, which is inflected by natural temporal cycles and spirals of Mortality, and Divinities every-place.

Figure 10 - Following others’ Life-path choices

The paths many walk along are deeply rutted, easy to navigate, and it’s harder to get lost.  A leader can point the way to a new path, one that is not as deeply furrowed. Historical worlds have important path-way choices that occupants make. Occupants of each particular historical world can sense something beyond, a sort of free space opening and closing beyond the work-world, equipment-world, consumption-world, welfare-world, and natural-world.  We see partial worlds, aspectual-noticing.

Efficacy and Storytelling

What if self-efficacy and collective-efficacy are interlocking paths? I am working this past two years with Steve Elias, and Stephanie Maynard-Patrick to relate storytelling to efficacy (in review). The relationship between self-efficacy and collective-efficacy are manifest in their relationship to Being. Especially in the late modern global capitalism, there is a sense in which collective-efficacy has become a will to power, a will to dominate and control everything, everywhere. Steve Elias and I are developing an essay about the meaning and understanding of 'efficacy' in relationship with 'storytelling'. We seek to mirror Bandura's emphasis on the constitution of efficacy as domain specific and not as general efficacy (a concept map that is epistemic). Domain specific efficacy, we take, as having something to do with Being. At the same time we are encouraging a rendition of domain efficacy that reaches the genuine power of storytelling. To have domain-efficacy in Being with storytelling, self-efficacy of the individual encounters some dangers with collective-efficacy.

Our thesis is that efficacy with storytelling is a two-wayness in relation to Being-in-the-world. Efficacy with storytelling means they are not really the same.

Figure 10 - Efficacy with Storytelling

Mastery-, vicarious- and affective-efficacy are in co-relationship with narratives of the past. Social persuasion is in co-relationship with living story webs in the immediate present. Antenarratives are in co-relationship with performance-, persistence-, outcome-, and motivation-antenarratives. Our thesis therefore is that efficacy and storytelling reinforce one another in a two-wayness. Narratives are mostly epistemic, living stories get objectified and reified in ontic calculatable and measurement inquiry, and some modes of antenarrative are epistemic-ontico, while others are ontological. Specifically we propose that linear- and cyclical-antenarratives are epistemic-ontico connecting while spiral- and rhizomatic-antenarratives are ontological. This approach tends to catch efficacy with storytelling up into a conceptual and calculative system that is remote from Being. Rhizomatic-antenarrative is the path that assembles in the interrelationship of efficacy with storytelling, manifesting movement that deterritorializes and reterritorializes. Spiral-antenarrative is a pattern of manifesting interlocking paths, each a series of episodic encounters between individual self-efficacy and collective-efficacy with once-occurrent-Being.

Efficacy with storytelling are mutually dependent upon one another. Efficacy with storytelling reveals a relationship between humans and Being (where Being is defined as realms or environments of Being-in-the-world). In self-efficacy, the individual is seeking to master Being. Similarly, in collective-efficacy many people together are seeking to master Being. Confining efficacy to general-efficacy would distance it from the sort of domain-efficacy in-Being.

Collective-efficacy that is domain-specific, brings-forth a presencing and a destining manifest in its Being. Mastery and vicarious experiences with narrative-past resort to cognitive, to thinking-feeling-intuition (i.e. epistemic). This can be either self-efficacy or collective-efficacy. Living story with social-persuasion-efficacy in the more immediate present leaves out something that is beyond the ontic, or prior to the ontic objectification of living stories into countable, stackable, measurable entities. Ontic treats living stories with objectivity by imposing order of measurement (only what is can be measured). The linear- and cyclic-antenarratives try to make the future replicate the past, in rather closed systems ways of managing organizations. Beyond these modes of antenarrating are the spiral- and rhizomatic-antenarratives, which are ontological, about future-past-present. Putting future ahead of past and present, is a sort of destining of efficacy with antenarrating in relationship to the destining of Being.

Efficacy with storytelling reveals something important about Being-in-the-world. Self-efficacy is part of a vast network of relationships constituting collective-efficacy. Collective-efficacy can be dangerous, because at the global level, it puts the entire world under dominion-control of a will to power. This is what Heidegger (1977 QCT, p. 117) calls the "standing-reserve" how all things everywhere are put in order-control, that becomes a path of a manifesting of destiny. The danger of course is the the collective-efficacy comes back to have dominion over self-efficacy, in a manifesting of destining that Enframes the order of steady-reserve. The global network of collective-efficacy enfroms so much order-control that everything everywhere is under to "dominion of Enframing: (Lovitt introduction 1977 QCT, p. xxx).

Mastery-, vicarious-, and affective-states-efficacy in making the connective linear- and/or cyclic-antenarrative paths at the collective (global) level become dangerous conditions to life and work. A contemporary example is the suicides of peasants working in Foxconn making Apple i-products. The conditions of work in the global corporation have manifested handcraft processes to assemble the aesthetic i-Phones, i-Books, i-Pads, etc. that have installed an ordering of work processes that are repetitive, remove workers from community, overwork them, in a collective-efficacy where self-efficacy has no space at all. The modes of self-persuasion-efficacy with living stories, are all about choosing to work to find benefits that are non-existent. The performance-efficacy-antenarrative, is work without a day off for weeks on end, in 16 hours shifts. The persistence-efficacy-antenarrative is the working at high fatigue, in the case of the aluminum polishing, where dust can catch fire, in other words, persistence with danger. The outcome-expectancy-antenarrative is not just low wages and dangerous work conditions, but a slow death, to where the only self-efficacy option is suicide, or protests threatening mass suicide of outcomes do not change. The motivation-efficacy-antenarrative is a consequence of collective-efficacy fun amuck distancing and concealing any space for self-efficacy choices.

Collective efficacy at Apple has become a will to power dominating self-efficacy in all things everywhere, an instrumental means-end ordering that reveals something holding sway, a destining on the precipice of an abyss called oblivion of peasant workers to handcraft the aesthetic designs of i-products. When late modern capitalism sacrifices self-efficacy for the global supply chain in the ordering of collective-efficacy, the "ruling of Enframing: its "dominion" and its "estranged from Being" reveal a danger and the hope of new path of possibility (Lovitt, introduction 1977 QCT, p. xxxiii).

The hope is that self-efficacy can somehow curb the collective-efficacy appetite for ordering-control of global technological processes of production, distribution, and consumption that is a destining on the edge of the abyss. The antenarrative-spiraling of collective-efficacy downward into the abyss of oblivion is one destining which while dancing along the precipice lights up the presencing of another pathway, a destining upward and outward that moves the spiral along a twirling and turning to tame the order-control of steady-reserve with the "openness-for-Being" of the "saving power" (ibid, p. xxxv). In other words, dancing on the edge of the abyss, the suicides alert not only the danger, but call upon Apple to change things, to develop a ♥-of-care for dwelling-in the fourfold of Earth and Sky, Mortals and Divinities that can tame the other fourfold of causalities, Material and Formative, Final and Efficient (1971 QCT). The path to ♥-of-care is blocked, and the suicides do announce that it is self-efficacy that is blocked by the dominion of collective-efficacy in not only Apple's processes, but in late modern capitalism. Apple after all is just following the path of Nike: joining the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a misnomer if ever there was one, as it is un-Fair to Labor, an Association of corporate giants that claim that monitoring by FLA is changing conditions, when in fact, after two decades, while there are improvements, there is as yet no ♥-of-care. If anything it is blocked more than ever.

Still there is another path, a way to change collective-efficacy-antenarrating so that self-efficacy is not squashed. Enframing brings danger but also the potentiality of the path of saving power from itself by dealing with the rule of technology and turning about on the edge of the abyss, glimpsing the lightning flash revealing another spiral path ascending, and taking a much wider orbit, venturing away from the downdraft, in a quest for the ♥-of-care.

Discussion and Conclusion

Following along a life-path without much Self-reflexivity and no self-efficacy space in the collective-efficacy can be pretty dangerous. A leader can make a path-choice, and people just follow along without looking at the Eleven D's. Disclosing the direction of a path, its deployment, and so forth can open one up to many life-path choices in a Situation. Making sense of a life path is not just about the chronology of events of a life, it is rather about what is beyond that in datable spans, in durations that are thresholds, tipping points where a life-path moves along upward, downward, left, right, inward or outward. It is these nonlinear and noncyclical spiral- and rhizomatic antenarratives that can take one off the beaten path.

Time has many conceptions. The linear and cyclic are most understood. The spiraling and rhizomatic-antenarratives are just beginning to be investigated. When a life-path of an individual or an entire organization is along a linear- or cyclic-antenarrative projectiion, its all about making processes repeatable, without difference. In the spiral- and rhizomatic-antenarrative life-paths there is caring for differences, for moving upwards, getting out of a downward plunge.