THINGS WORK WHEN WE ARE MINDFUL OF HOW PARTS FUNCTION AND RELATE AS A WHOLE
Most of us experience activities as a series of functions.
The core of a functional approach is computation—evaluating the functions of all parts.
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Key traits:
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Uses immutability (functions can’t change once created).
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Relies on pure functions (same input always gives the same output).
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Emphasizes pathways. Scenarios are planned in advance. A situation is read, a response is calculated, and a function is selected to execute it.
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It’s easy to become too mindful of function. Eventually, our functional programming can’t react quickly enough to events.
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Emergence: When parts combine, they create new functions that do not exist in the individual parts.
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Nonlinearity: Small changes in the beginning can lead to massive, completely unexpected results later. This is called the butterfly effect.
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Complex Interactions: As the number of connections between parts grows, the total system becomes too difficult to calculate fully.
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Information Limits: We never have exact data on every single starting condition or outside force.
Examples
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Water Molecules: Knowing how a single H₂O molecule acts does not let you predict the exact shape of a splashing wave or ice crystals without seeing the whole system.
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The Brain: You can study a single neuron, but you cannot predict a specific human thought or memory just from that piece.
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Weather: We understand air and heat, but tracking every wind current to predict rain weeks away is impossible.
When we are only mindful of function, we can't anticipate.
The ability to anticipate comes from reading the relationships between the parts of the whole, not from knowing how individual parts function.
Insight comes from the relationship of the whole, not from a reduction to the parts.
The whole is not the sum
of its parts. It's the
relationship
between them.
Without the whole, even fully functioning parts stop working.
We play basketball and swim to be mindful of how functional parts relate as a whole.
We notice how our feet, hips, head, and hands connect. We build awareness of everything moving around us. Then we let go of any conditioned reliance on what we know functions. We relax into an alert awareness of connection. Without thought, we anticipate mini adjustments for a dance, a contest of anticipation.
An alternative league: A contest of anticipation
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We’ve found that many sports governing bodies prioritise function. They train coaches to refine athletes’ functions and select athletes who perform them best. We offer an alternative: A league for players who want a contest of anticipation.
Time & Location
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Location is TBD
About the event
Three factors make it hard to strengthen relationships between the parts so they connect better as a whole.
Cognitive offloading: We rely on technology to organise our lives, which directs our attention toward individual parts.
Reductionism: Breaking a big problem into tiny pieces can feel like an easier, safer way to please others. We follow assigned roles and repeat familiar habits. We do what others do because, if we are wrong, at least we are wrong together. But when we reduce each other to individual parts, we can’t give one another access to the relational whole. We all end up living empty reductionist lives. Leaders need to protect the whole from those who would reduce it to its parts.
Generational gap: The generation shaped by the world war prioritised building function. Later generations used technology to reduce the world into increasingly smaller functional parts. Today, we don’t have the relational…
SkillsofWow.org is the governing body for those who coach the skills of Wow.