Сергей Гладков – The Human Being as a Multilevel System (страница 9)

It does not mean immobility.

It does not mean suppressing change.

Stabilization is maintaining the coherence of experience.

Sometimes coherence is held through habit. A person does what is familiar because the familiar lowers uncertainty.

Sometimes through memory. The past connects the present situation with already lived forms.

Sometimes through language. By naming an experience, a person gains the possibility of holding it, passing it on, comparing it, and placing it into a story.

Sometimes through attention. What is held by attention receives more resources and becomes more stable.

Sometimes through meaning. If an event is included in a story, it looks less like a random fragment.

Sometimes through other people. A conversation, recognition, a look, a promise, a conflict, or support can return to a person a coherence that he could not hold alone.

Sometimes through external structures: notes, photographs, schedules, objects, places, rituals, professional roles.

The human being turns out to be not a point, but a process of maintaining coherence on several levels.

We can say it even more carefully: a person experiences himself as a point when this multilevel coherence is sufficiently gathered.

When memory, body, attention, language, and meaning do not diverge too much, a feeling of simplicity appears: "this is me." But in crisis, this simplicity weakens. Then what is usually hidden behind the smoothness of experience becomes visible: the human being is held not by one inner support, but by a network of mutual supports.

This is why the formula does not cancel the experience of "I." It explains why it can be stable, fragile, strong, vague, lost, or restored.

Why This Matters

If we continue to think of the human being as a hidden center, many phenomena look like a simple weakness of the center.

A person did not do what he decided to do, so the center failed to cope.

A person repeats an old pattern, so the center governs poorly.

A person goes through an identity crisis, so the center has lost itself.

A person depends on relationships, so the center is not autonomous enough.

But such a picture often turns complexity into blame too quickly.

If the human being is a system for stabilizing experience, the question changes.

We ask not only: why did he fail to cope?

We ask:

what coherence broke down?

which level of experience stopped supporting the others?

what held the old form?

why has the new form not yet become stable?

which processes are working against one another?

which external structures used to support coherence?

what meaning disappeared?

what memory continues to organize the reaction?

what attention again returns experience to the old place?

This approach does not cancel responsibility. It only makes it less primitive. Responsibility stops being an appeal to a small inner ruler and becomes a question about reconfiguring the system: what needs to change so that a new coherence can be held?

This is also important for understanding crisis.

Crisis does not always mean breakdown. Sometimes it means that the old way of stabilization no longer works. For many years, a person may have held himself through work, relationships, the role of the strong one, the role of the needed one, the image of the successful one, the image of the suffering one, the image of the correct one. Then circumstances change, and the old support stops gathering experience.

Then a person may feel disintegration.

But perhaps it is not the person as an essence that is disintegrating.

It is the old structure of coherence that is disintegrating.

This distinction is very important. If an essence is disintegrating, only fear remains. If a structure is disintegrating, the possibility of reconfiguration appears.

This is exactly why the model of stabilization of experience does not destroy the human being. It tries to see how he is held when he seems unified, and what happens when this coherence is disturbed.

Everyday Examples of Stabilization

The simplest forms of stabilization are almost invisible.

A person puts his keys in the same place. This is not just convenience. It is a small external structure that reduces the chaos of the future morning. Memory does not have to search from zero each time. Space takes on part of the holding.

A person keeps a diary. Sometimes he thinks he is simply recording events. But often writing does more: it connects an experience that was too diffuse inside. While a feeling has not been named, it may occupy the whole field. After being written down, it becomes part of a story. It does not disappear, but it receives a form.

A person returns to a familiar place when he feels bad. A kitchen, a park, a road along the river, a work desk, an armchair by the window. The place does not solve the problem. But it helps experience gather again. The body recognizes the space, attention stops spending energy on uncertainty, memory returns a familiar line.

A person calls a friend and after the conversation says, "it has become clearer to me." The friend did not put a new entity into him. But the conversation helped connect scattered experiences. What was an anxious knot inside became a sequence: this is what happened, this is what frightened me, this is what matters to me, this is what can be done.

A person keeps to a ritual. Morning tea, a walk, the order of preparing for work, an evening note, a short silence before a difficult task. From outside, this may seem like a small thing. But rituals often hold continuity where an inner decision is not enough.

In all these cases, coherence does not come from one center. It is distributed between body, memory, objects, language, space, other people, and repetition.

And this is exactly what allows us to speak of the human being as a multilevel system.

We can add several more tense examples.

After a difficult conversation, a person walks home, although he could have taken transport. He does not "solve the problem" by walking. But step, breath, streets, and the repeated rhythm of movement gradually return experience from chaotic agitation into a more coherent form. Thought stops jumping, the body lowers tension, the words of the conversation become less sharp. Walking here is not just a physical action. It takes part in stabilization.

Another person, before an important decision, lays papers out on the table. Lists, schemes, notes, dates, names. Inside, everything seems too tangled. But when the elements are placed outside, it becomes possible to see connections. Paper does not think instead of the person. But it helps the system of experience hold more than inner memory alone could hold.

A third person returns to an old photograph and unexpectedly understands why the present situation hurt him so much. The photograph is not the cause of understanding. But it connects the present feeling with a past layer of experience. What was torn apart receives a line. Sometimes an external object becomes the point through which experience connects itself again.

A fourth person repeats the same phrase: "I need time." At first it sounds like a defense. Then like a request. Then like an acknowledgement of a boundary. Language here does not merely report a state to another person. It creates a form in which the person himself begins to hold his state differently.

Such examples show that stabilization does not always look like strong will or a clear decision. Often it happens through small forms of coherence.

Objection: If There Is No Center, Who Makes Decisions?

Here an objection appears that cannot be bypassed:

"If there is no center, who makes decisions?"

This is one of the strongest questions. Because without an answer to it, the model may look like an escape from the obvious. We really do choose. We sign a contract, leave or stay, tell the truth or remain silent, begin treatment, change work, answer a message, admit a mistake. We cannot simply say that decisions "happen," as if the person disappears.

But the question can be made more exact.

Perhaps a decision is not always an order from the center.

Perhaps a decision is the moment when several levels of experience gather into action.

Sometimes a decision matures for a long time. A person says for years that he is not ready, and then one day takes a step. From outside it seems: he suddenly decided. But inside, meaning, fear, memory, the image of the future, support from others, and tiredness from the old form may have been reconfiguring for a long time. The day of decision turns out to be not the beginning, but the visible point of assembly.

Sometimes a decision is made quickly. But even then it may rely on already formed patterns. The experience of a doctor, driver, teacher, parent, or musician makes it possible to act almost instantly. Not because a small center calculated the options faster than everyone else, but because the system has already learned to recognize the situation and gather a response.