I and Me - The Visible and the Hidden

The Iceberg Analogy

Using the user illusion for 'I and Me' and the work of Donella Meadows in 'places to intervene' can you illustrate these as two icebergs

Combining the “User Illusion” of the human mind with Donella Meadows’ systems-thinking leverage points creates a powerful visual metaphor: two icebergs where the most visible parts are the least powerful, while the vast, hidden foundations determine the actual behavior of the system.

Iceberg 1: The Human Mind (Tor Nørretranders)

In The User Illusion, Nørretranders argues that our conscious experience is a simplified “user interface” for a far more complex biological reality.

• The Tip (The ‘I’): Represents our consciousness. It is the “User Illusion”—the simplistic mental image we have of ourselves. It is linguistic and linear but has a very low bandwidth, processing only about 16 to 50 bits of information per second. It is a spectator that often takes credit for actions it did not initiate.

• The Submerged Bulk (The ‘Me’): Represents the non-conscious self. It processes roughly 11 million bits per second. This is the “Me” that the “I” draws upon for fluent speech, riding a bicycle, and expertise. It is rooted in the body and the planet’s biological systems (Gaia).

---

Iceberg 2: Places to Intervene (Donella Meadows)

Donella Meadows’ “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System” describes where to change a system, moving from superficial tweaks to foundational shifts.

• The Tip (Low Leverage): These are the Parameters and Numbers. These interventions (like taxes, subsidies, or standards) are the easiest to see and change, but they rarely shift the fundamental behavior of the system. They are the “events” or “symptoms” on the surface.

• The Submerged Bulk (High Leverage): These are the System Rules, Goals, and Paradigms.

  • Rules & Information Flows: Just below the surface, changing who has access to information or the rules of the game can significantly shift patterns.

  • The Deep Base (The Paradigm): The most powerful leverage point is the Mindset or Paradigm from which the system arises—its goals, power structure, and rules. At the very bottom is the power to transcend paradigms—the ability to realize that no paradigm is “true” and to stay flexible.

---

The Synthesis: Why the Metaphor Works

Both icebergs illustrate that complexity is hidden below the surface.

1. The Illusion of Control: In the mind, the “I” thinks it is in charge, but it is actually supported by the massive processing of the “Me”. Similarly, in systems, we often try to “fix” things at the tip (numbers and parameters) without realizing the system is driven by the massive, hidden paradigm at the base.

2. Bandwidth vs. Leverage: The “I” has low bandwidth but can exercise a “veto” over the “Me”. Similarly, changing a paradigm is the most difficult task (low frequency/high resistance), but it provides the ultimate leverage to transform every other part of the iceberg.

3. The Role of Language: Both authors suggest that our linguistic, conscious models are maps, not the terrain. To truly change ourselves or our systems, we must look “deeper than the map” into the non-conscious “Me” and the foundational paradigms that govern our collective behaviour.

Going Below the Surface

Can you analyse approaches to make more of the material below the waterline visible

To “make more of the material below the waterline visible” requires moving beyond the surface-level data of the “I” and the Numbers into the deep, non-conscious architectures of the “Me” and System Paradigms.

Based on the synthesis of Tor Nørretranders’ The User Illusion and Donella Meadows’ leverage points, here is an analysis of approaches to bridge this gap:

1. Shifting from Information to “Exformation”

The most visible material at the waterline is Information—the measurable, explicit output. However, the real depth lies in Exformation: the massive amount of information deliberately discarded to create meaning.

• The Approach: Instead of focusing on the final signal (the 16 bits/sec), analyze the context and history of that signal.

• Practical Application: In systems, this means looking not just at the current “Numbers” (Meadows’ low leverage), but at the “Buried Redundancy” or “Logical Depth”—the amount of work and history required to reach the current state.

2. Utilizing “Interactive” and “Hands-on” Learning

The conscious “I” is linear and struggles with the complexity of the nonlinear world. Relying solely on formal, symbolic learning keeps you at the tip of the iceberg.

• The Approach: Move from Formal Learning (symbolic) to Interactive Learning (hands-on).

• Practical Application: This engages the “Me” and its higher bandwidth (11 million bits/sec). By physically manipulating a system (the “Exploratory” approach), a person develops “Tacit Knowledge”—an non-conscious understanding of the system’s rules that cannot be fully expressed in words.

3. Exploiting System Feedback Loops

In Meadows’ work, information flows and feedback loops are higher leverage points than simple parameters. In Nørretranders’ work, the “Me” is the part of the person that manages these massive, non-conscious feedback cycles with the environment (Gaia).

• The Approach: Improve Information Flows. Making previously hidden information visible to the right actors in a system can trigger a “Phase Transition” in behavior.

• Practical Application: Providing a person with “Biofeedback” (e.g., monitoring heart rate or brain waves) essentially makes the non-conscious “Me” visible to the conscious “I,” allowing for new levels of self-regulation.

4. Identifying “Emergent” Patterns

Complexity is the territory between total order (frozen) and total chaos (liquid). You cannot see the “bulk” of the iceberg if you only look at individual components.

• The Approach: Look for Emergence. This is the realization that “More Is Different”—collective properties that only appear when many parts interact over time.

• Practical Application: In social systems, this means observing “Emergent Politics”—how thousands of tiny, non-conscious actions by individuals eventually lead to massive shifts in a global paradigm, such as the sudden thaw in the Cold War.

5. Addressing the “User Illusion” Directly

The “I” is a “User Interface” designed to simplify reality for the sake of survival. To see below the waterline, one must acknowledge that this interface is a map, not the terrain.

• The Approach: Practice Conscious Evolution. This involves learning to be aware of the fact that we are not aware of most things.

• Practical Application: Meadows suggests that the highest leverage point is the Power to Transcend Paradigms. This is the psychological equivalent of realizing you are looking at a “User Illusion” and choosing to stay flexible enough to switch models when the terrain changes.

---

Would you like to explore a specific case study, such as how these deep interventions apply to climate change or organizational leadership?

Christopher Alexander

How does christopher alexander visualise the separation and interplay of the I and Me in this iceberg analogy?

Based on the provided documents, the specific “iceberg analogy” separating the “I” and the “Me” is a concept from Tor Nørretranders’ The User Illusion. While Christopher Alexander’s work is deeply integrated with these ideas in the context of systems thinking and architectural legacy, he visualizes this interplay through his own distinct framework of “Self-Conscious” versus “Unself-Conscious” systems.

The separation and interplay are visualized as follows:

1. The Separation: “I” (Consciousness) vs. “Me” (The System)

In the context of the iceberg analogy, Nørretranders defines the “I” as the conscious user illusion—a low-bandwidth, linguistic interface that processes only about 16 to 50 bits of information per second. The “Me” is the vast, submerged non-conscious self, processing 11 million bits per second and managing the actual biological and system-level operations.

Alexander visualizes a parallel separation in his analysis of design:

• The Unself-Conscious (The “Me”): This corresponds to the submerged bulk of the iceberg. In these cultures, design happens through a series of “minor adjustments” that are not consciously directed by an individual “I” but are governed by the deep, traditional rules of the system.

• The Self-Conscious (The “I”): This corresponds to the visible tip of the iceberg. It represents the rise of the professional designer or individual who consciously attempts to master complexity through abstract models and explicit rules.

2. The Interplay: Integration and “Veto”

The interplay between these two layers is critical for achieving “wholeness” or “quality without a name.”

• The “Me” as the Driver: For Alexander, a living system is driven by the non-conscious “Me”—the biological and traditional patterns that have “logical depth” and historical complexity.

• The “I” as the Veto: In the iceberg model, the conscious “I” does not initiate action but provides a veto power to stop destructive impulses. In Alexander’s theory, the “I” should ideally step back to allow the “Me” to perform activities it is better at, such as “spontaneous, vetoless flow” in creation or social interaction.

• Refinement vs. Interference: Alexander notes that self-consciousness often interferes with the system’s ability to heal itself because the “I” uses simplified maps (the tip of the iceberg) that ignore the complex terrain of the “Me” (the base).

3. Visualizing “Harmony Seeking Computations”

Alexander visualizes the resolution of the interplay through Harmony Seeking Computations. This is a process where the conscious “I” works in tandem with the “Me” to identify and fix “misfits” or tensions in the environment. The goal of the interplay is to reach a state where the individual “I” is no longer separate but is rooted in the “Me” and the larger planetary biological systems (Gaia).

John Warfield

What specific advice does John Warfield provide for working at the different levels on the 'I and Me' and 'Places to Intervene' frameworks

John Warfield provides specific advice for working across the different organizational levels to bridge the gap between the conscious “I” (the tip of the iceberg) and the non-conscious “Me” (the submerged bulk), as well as to address Donella Meadows’ high-leverage “Places to Intervene.” His primary framework for this is the “Coherent Organization,” which is vertically organized into three levels.

Level 1: The Strategic Level (The Tip of the Iceberg)

At the highest organizational level, where broad goals are set and survival is pondered, Warfield’s advice focuses on shifting the paradigm of leadership:

• Shift from “Resolvers” to “Enablers”: Top-level managers must stop seeing themselves as direct “complexity resolvers.” Instead, they should become “strategic enablers” who oversee the quality of information flow in the organization.

• Take Structural Support Seriously: High-level executives need to be provided with, and take seriously, the products of structural support (such as a problematique) to inform their decisions involving complexity.

• Visualize the Ripples: Leaders should use high-quality visible displays to see how their decisions ripple through the organization into the two lower levels.

Level 2: The Mediating Level (The Waterline)

This level mediates between the producers’ activities and the strategic goals. Warfield’s advice here is centered on closing feedback loops and reconciling language:

• Reconcile “Linguistic Diversion”: Mediating actors (middle managers) are tasked with reconciling linguistic differences within the enterprise to ensure that strategy and action are aligned.

• Aggregating the “Me” for the “I”: Middle management must aggregate highly detailed matters from the producing level into communications that flow upward to the strategic level (e.g., in budget requests).

• Explain Connections: They must explain the connections between often ambiguous top-level strategies and the specific expectations of the programmable actors at the producing level.

Level 3: The Producing Level (The Submerged Bulk)

This is where the greatest population exists and where the actual “Me” of the organization’s biological and technical complexity resides:

• Identify the “Problem Set”: The producing level identifies the vast “problem set”—dozens or hundreds of individual issues that constitute the submerged bulk of the system .

• Be Integral to Design: Warfield advises that the people at this level must be seen as integral to the design, maintenance, and operation of any system intended to resolve a problem. If they are not included, the hope of creating an effective system is lost.

Global Infrastructure Advice: The Corporate Observatorium

To make the hidden material below the waterline visible to all levels, Warfield strongly recommends installing a specific type of infrastructure:

• The Situation Room/Observatorium: Organizations should build a physical or virtual space where structural models and task graphics (like DELTA Charts) are prominently displayed.

• Maintaining Continuity: The Corporate Observatorium allows all levels—from strategic to operational—to see the vertical connections and maintain continuity throughout the life of an implementation project.

• Linguistic Adjustments: All levels must adopt “linguistic adjustments,” such as replacing the term “the problem” with “the problem set” and “complex problem” with “problematique” . This aligns the conscious “I” with the actual complexity of the “Me”.

Stafford Beer

How does Stafford Beer approach the same issue

Stafford Beer’s approach to these frameworks is centred on Cybernetics and his Viable System Model (VSM). He addresses the “I and Me” and “Places to Intervene” by focusing on how a system—whether a firm, a brain, or a society—manages complexity (variety) and maintains its identity.

Here is how Beer’s work aligns with and expands upon the iceberg and organizational level metaphors:

1. The “I” and the “Me”: Variety Engineering

Beer parallels Nørretranders’ “User Illusion” through the concept of Variety Engineering. He acknowledges that a manager’s conscious “I” has far less information-handling capacity than the operational “Me” of the organization.

• The “I” as a Regulator: Beer’s guiding principle, the Conant-Ashby Theorem, states that “every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system”. However, because the “I” is low-bandwidth, it cannot model every detail of the “Me.”

• Attenuators and Amplifiers: To bridge this gap, Beer uses Attenuators to filter the massive variety of the “Me” into manageable “information” for the “I,” and Amplifiers to increase the “I’s” impact on the system.

• The Black Box Philosophy: Beer asserts that it is “not necessary to enter the black box to understand the nature of the function it performs”. He advises focusing on the outputs and behaviors of the “Me” rather than trying to consciously control its internal biological or technical complexity.

2. Places to Intervene: Systems 1 through 5

Beer’s VSM identifies five systems that correspond to Meadows’ hierarchy of leverage points:

• Low Leverage (System 1 & 2): These are the operational units (Producing Level) and the coordination rules that prevent “oscillations” or conflicts between them. These are the visible “numbers” and “parameters” at the tip of the iceberg.

• Mid Leverage (System 3 & 4): System 3 focuses on the “Inside and Now” (Optimization), while System 4 focuses on the “Outside and Then” (Strategy and Future-scanning). Intervening here changes how the system adapts to its environment.

• High Leverage (System 5): This is the level of Philosophy and Identity. Intervening at System 5 is equivalent to Meadows’ highest leverage point: changing the Paradigm. It determines the “ground rules” for all other levels.

3. Bridging the Waterline: Algedonic Signals and “Sigmoots”

To ensure the submerged “Me” is visible to the conscious “I,” Beer proposes mechanisms that bypass traditional hierarchy:

• Algedonic Signals: These are “pain and pleasure” loops that alert the highest level of recursion (the “I”) to a crisis in the operations (the “Me”) immediately, before the information is attenuated by middle management.

• Informal Networks (“Sigmoots”): Beer advocated for unstructured, informal connections between staff at all levels. He believed that “Sigmoots”—meetings where anyone could speak regardless of seniority—were essential for spreading information and building a group consciousness that traditional organization charts (the “maps”) ignore.

4. Comparison with Warfield’s Levels

Beer’s VSM provides a functional “anatomy” that maps directly onto Warfield’s Coherent Organization:

• Warfield’s Strategic Level = Beer’s System 5 & 4: The focus is on identity and the future environment.

• Warfield’s Mediating Level = Beer’s System 3 & 2: The focus is on optimization and resolving linguistic or operational “misfits”.

• Warfield’s Producing Level = Beer’s System 1: The autonomous units where the actual work (the biological “Me”) occurs.

Beer’s ultimate advice is to design for autonomy. He argues that the “I” should only intervene in the “Me” through a “resource bargain”—allowing the submerged parts of the iceberg to function independently as long as they remain within the bounds of the system’s overall identity.

James Wilk

What is James Wilk's perspective on consciousness and how we can change the balance between I and Me

James Wilk’s perspective on consciousness and the “I and Me” balance is built on a radical “figure-ground reversal” of traditional psychology. He views consciousness not as a private inner world, but as a publicly verbalizable abstraction of our “conditional readiness-to-respond”.

To Wilk, changing the balance between the “I” (the conscious narrative) and the “Me” (the autonomous, non-conscious driver) is about moving from “Management” to “Release.”

1. The Nature of the Split

• The “I” (The Narrative Map): Wilk argues that the “I” lives in narratives, which are inherently false because reality is not narrative in structure. The “I” tries to “cause” change through long-winded, clumsy efforts.

• The “Me” (The Machine in the Ghost): The “Me” represents the autonomous, purposeful biological reality—the “Machine in the Ghost”—that manages 11 million bits of sensory input per second to navigate the world.

2. Changing the Balance: Strategies for Intervention

Wilk suggests that we cannot change the “Me” by shouting at it with the “I” (narrative). Instead, we must use the following approaches to shift the system’s balance:

• Filtering, Not Modeling: Do not try to build a complex mental model of the “Me.” Instead, “filter” the complexity by identifying the specific, idiosyncratic constraints that are currently stopping the desired behavior from happening.

• Manipulating Context-Markers: The “Me” responds to context, not commands. You shift the balance by delicately manipulating “context-markers”—small pieces of communication that allow the non-conscious self to perceive a new situation and spontaneously self-organize into a new pattern.

• Gentle Dissolution of Presuppositions: The “I” is often “bedevilled by a form of words”. By using “benevolent skepticism” to undermine a single limiting presupposition of the “I,” the therapist or leader can release the “Me” to act according to the possibilities already immanent in the situation.

• Minimalist Intervention: Rather than trying to “cause” change through brute force, Wilk looks for the “smallest intervention” (the needle in the haystack) that will trigger an all-or-none “flip” from the existing state to the desired state.

3. The Practical Result: “Organizational Judo”

When the balance is correctly shifted, the “I” stops trying to push a pea up a mountain with its nose and starts “steering the natural forces of change by judiciously pulling out the stops”. This approach, which Wilk calls “organizational judo,” allows major transformations to occur rapidly and effortlessly because the intervention is designed from the “subjective point of view” of the system itself.

Gregory Bateson

Does gregory bateson discuss the concepts in I and Me

Gregory Bateson does not use the specific terms “I and Me” in the same way Tor Nørretranders does, but his entire body of work is a rigorous exploration of the same phenomenon: the dangerous gap between Conscious Purpose (the “I”) and Systemic Wisdom (the “Me” or the “Ecology of Mind”).

In the context of the iceberg analogy, Bateson’s perspective can be analyzed as follows:

1. The “I”: Conscious Purpose as a “Short-Arc”

Bateson views our conscious experience (the “I”) as a “sampled” and often distorted version of the total mental process.

• The Error of Linearity: Consciousness is essentially a mechanism for pursuing specific goals (purposes). It tends to see the world as a series of linear, causal chains—“short arcs”—rather than the complex, circular feedback loops that actually sustain life.

• The User Illusion as Pathology: Bateson argues that when the conscious “I” believes it is the sole driver of the system, it becomes a “pathology of epistemology”. This is because it lacks the “systemic wisdom” of the non-conscious mind and can end up destroying the very environment (Gaia) it depends on.

2. The “Me”: The Immanent Mind

Bateson’s equivalent of the “Me” (the submerged bulk) is the Total Mind, which he defines as “immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology”.

• Beyond the Skin: For Bateson, the “Me” is not confined to the individual’s brain or body. It includes the pathways of information and messages that connect us to others and to nature.

• The Unconscious Bulk: He agrees with the “User Illusion” premise that the vast majority of mental process is unconscious. He views this non-conscious part as the repository of “wisdom” and “grace”—the ability to act in harmony with the whole system without the interference of purpose.

3. Changing the Balance: Learning III and the Dissolution of the “I”

Bateson provides a specific framework for shifting the balance from the “I” to the “Me” through his Levels of Learning:

• Learning II (Character): At this level, the “I” is formed into a specific character or identity.

• Learning III (Transcendence): This is the equivalent of Meadows’ highest leverage point: Transcending Paradigms. In Learning III, the individual realizes that the “self” (the “I”) is a fiction or a “product of our perceiving act”.

• The Result: Personal identity “merges into all the processes of relationship”. The “I” is no longer in charge of organizing behavior; instead, the person acts from a state of “Not-Separateness” with the larger biological system.

4. Bateson’s Advice for “Places to Intervene”

If Bateson were to annotate the “System Change” iceberg, his highest leverage point would be Aesthetics and Grace:

• The Aesthetic Intervention: Bateson suggests that art and aesthetics allow the conscious “I” to “glimpse” the systemic wisdom of the “Me”.

• The Veto of Humility: Like Nørretranders, Bateson believes the “I” must adopt a stance of humility, recognizing that it cannot “control” a system that is “computationally irreducible”.

Niklas Luhmann

How does Niklas Luhmann respond to the ideas of I and Me in a social setting

Niklas Luhmann’s response to the “I and Me” in a social setting is a radical departure from traditional humanism. He does not see the “I” as a part of society; instead, he places the entire human being—both body and mind—in the environment of the social system.

In Luhmann’s framework, we can visualize the two icebergs through his concepts of Psychic Systems and Social Systems:

Iceberg 1: The Psychic System (Consciousness)

Luhmann defines consciousness as an “operationally closed” autopoietic system.

• The Tip (The “I”): This is the self-observation of consciousness. It is the way a mind distinguishes between itself (self-reference) and the objects it thinks about (other-reference).

• The Submerged Bulk: The vast majority of the mind’s operations, including biochemical and neurophysiological processes, are opaque even to itself. Consciousness can only “feel” or “perceive” a tiny fraction of its internal complexity.

Iceberg 2: The Social System (Communication)

For Luhmann, society is not made of people, but of communications.

• The Tip (The Social “Person”): In a social setting, what we call “I” or “Me” is an operational fiction. Society creates “Persons” as addressable units—essentially “tokens for behavior”—to allow communication to continue. When you say “I” in a meeting, society uses that “I” as a point of attribution for actions and decisions.

• The Submerged Bulk: This is the massive, ongoing network of recursive communication. It includes every synthesis of information, utterance, and understanding that has ever occurred in that system, most of which is invisible to any single participant.

---

Approach to Changing the Balance

Luhmann’s “places to intervene” are not about changing people’s minds, but about changing the structures of communication:

1. Structural Coupling via Language: Consciousness and communication are separate icebergs, but they are “structurally coupled” through language. Language is the “needle’s eye” through which psychic complexity must pass to become socially relevant.

2. Addressing the “Blind Spot”: Every system has a blind spot—it cannot see that it cannot see. To “make the submerged material visible,” one must engage in second-order observation: observing how others observe.

3. Irritation as Intervention: Since systems are closed, you cannot “command” a change. You can only provide “irritations”—new information that the system’s own internal rules might choose to process and integrate, potentially triggering a self-organized shift in its paradigm.

Geoffrey Vickers

Does Geoffrey Vickers discuss issues of consciousness and thinking as per the 'I and Me' model

Geoffrey Vickers does indeed discuss consciousness and thinking through a framework remarkably similar to the ‘I and Me’ iceberg analogy. While he uses different terminology, his work centers on the tension between conscious, goal-directed action and the deep, tacit “appreciative system” that governs our perception.

1. Vickers’ Analogue: The “Backroom Boys” and the “Front Parlor”

Vickers used a vivid metaphor to describe his own mental activity: a dialogue between his “back room” and his “front parlor”.

• The Front Parlor (The ‘I’): This is the visible, conscious space where we carry out deliberate thought, language, and the pursuit of specific purposes.

• The Backroom Boys (The ‘Me’): This represents the submerged bulk of the iceberg—the non-conscious, tacit processes that perform the “manifold pushes and pulls” required to make sense of the world. He believed that these “backroom” operations, while essential, are often “unobservable” and inaccessible to the conscious mind.

2. The Appreciative System (The Submerged Bulk)

Vickers’ core concept is the Appreciative System, which functions as the “Me” below the waterline. It is a “readiness to see and value and respond” to situations in specific ways based on a lifetime of experience.

• Tacit Nature: He argued that human judgment is always partly tacit and cannot be fully described in explicit or analytic terms.

• The Center of Action: Vickers went as far as to suggest that conscious operations might be the least central part of the process of appreciation. The “Me” (the appreciative settings) does the heavy lifting of filtering 11 million bits of sensory data into meaningful “facts” and “values” for the “I” to consider.

3. The “I” at the Tip: Purpose vs. Norm-Holding

Vickers provided a sharp critique of the “rational model of action” which equates human thinking solely with goal-seeking (an activity of the conscious “I”).

• Goal-Seeking (The Tip): The “I” focuses on specific objectives, which Vickers saw as an “endless succession” that fails to explain the origin of our motivations.

• Norm-Holding (The Base): The “Me” is actually concerned with maintenance and regulation—keeping a complex set of relationships within acceptable limits (e.g., maintaining health, social status, or safety) rather than just “hitting a target”.

4. Thinking as “Matching” rather than “Weighing”

Vickers distinguished between two ways the “I” and “Me” interact during thought:

• Weighing (Conscious ‘I’): The traditional view of judgment as weighing alternatives in a linear, causal chain.

• Matching (Systemic ‘Me’): An informational process where the brain scans for a “good enough” fit between a situation and our internal norms. This matching is often instantaneous and happens “below the waterline” before the “I” even realizes a decision has been made.

5. Advice for Changing the Balance

To make more of the “material below the waterline” visible, Vickers suggests:

• Reflecting on “Misfits”: Consciously identifying signals of “mismatch” between our reality judgments (what is) and our value judgments (what ought to be).

• Developing Appreciative Skills: Recognizing that we are “responsible architects” in both the world of events and the world of ideas.

• Rejecting the Conscious/Unconscious Binary: He noted that the strict antithesis between conscious and unconscious may have “exhausted its utility,” and we should instead focus on the wholeness of the appreciative cycle.

Humberto Maturana

Does Humberto Maturana discuss issues of consciousness and thinking as per the 'I and Me' model

Humberto Maturana does not use the specific “I and Me” terminology of The User Illusion, but his Biology of Cognition provides a foundational scientific explanation for that iceberg model. In Maturana’s framework, the “Me” is the autonomous, biological system (autopoiesis), while the “I” is a social phenomenon that arises through “languaging”.

1. The “Me”: Structural Determinism (The Submerged Bulk)

Maturana visualizes the non-conscious “Me” as an operationally closed system.

• Operational Closure: The nervous system does not “pick up” information from the environment; instead, it is a closed network of changing relations of neuronal activity.

• Structural Determinism: Whatever happens in the system is determined by its internal structure at that moment, not by external triggers. This represents the massive processing bulk of the “Me” that maintains the body’s life and integrity regardless of what the conscious “I” thinks it is doing.

• Blind Spot: Because the “Me” is operationally closed, it cannot see its own functioning; it has a “blind spot” where it cannot see that it cannot see.

2. The “I”: Languaging and the Observer (The Tip)

For Maturana, consciousness and the “I” are not located inside the brain, but in the “social coordination of actions.”

• Languaging: Self-consciousness (the “I”) is a recursive coordination of behavior that happens in language. The “I” arises only when we begin to observe our own coordinations with others.

• The Observer: The “I” is essentially an “Observer” that makes distinctions. Maturana famously states that “everything said is said by an observer,” meaning our conscious reality is a description we generate, not a direct window into the world.

• The Illusion of Choice: What we call “thinking” or “deciding” (the tip) is often the conscious observer trying to explain the behaviors that were already biologically determined by the non-conscious “Me”.

3. Approaching the Waterline: How to Change the Balance

Maturana offers specific “leverage points” to bridge the gap between the conscious “I” and the biological “Me”:

• Acceptance of Emotions: Maturana argues that “rationality” (the tip) is always built upon a foundation of “emotioning” (the base). To make the submerged material visible, one must recognize the emotional bias that determines which “rational” path the “I” follows.

• Second-Order Observation: One can “see” below the waterline by observing the act of observing. By asking “How am I making this distinction?”, the “I” can gain awareness of the structural constraints of the “Me”.

• Love as a Biological Necessity: He describes love as the biological opening of space for another’s existence. In social settings, this “intervension” allows the “Me” to self-organize into more harmonious patterns without the “I” needing to use force or control.

4. Integration with Meadows’ Leverage Points

In Maturana’s view, the highest leverage point is the Ontology of the Observer. By changing the paradigm from “I am seeing reality” to “I am bringing forth a world in languaging,” a person transcends their own “User Illusion” and begins to design the system from its biological foundations.

Julian Jaynes

How does ET Jaynes in the origin of consciousness discuss the concepts behind the 'I and Me' model.

Tor Nørretranders explicitly uses Julian Jaynes’s 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, to bridge his own concepts of the conscious I and the nonconscious Me with the historical evolution of human psychology.

The work maps to Jaynes’s theories in several key ways:

The Unconscious Nature of Thought Nørretranders uses Jaynes to illustrate that consciousness processes far less information than we assume and is largely an illusion. Jaynes argues that “the actual process of thinking… is not conscious at all,” and that we only consciously perceive the preparation and the end result of our thoughts. We are essentially blind to the moments when we are not conscious, leading us to falsely believe that consciousness pervades our entire mental life.

The Bicameral Mind Maps to the Me Jaynes theorizes that humans living 3,000 years ago did not possess consciousness, introspection, or free will. Instead, they operated with a “bicameral” (two-chambered) mind, where nonlinguistic activity in the right hemisphere of the brain was transmitted to the left hemisphere as auditory hallucinations, which early humans perceived as the commanding voices of gods. These ancient humans functioned perfectly well through routine and instinct—much like how a modern human can navigate a familiar route without conscious thought. Nørretranders maps this preconscious state directly to his concept of the Me; he argues that a preconscious person was “only a Me,” completely guided by nonconscious information processing.

The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and the Rise of the I According to Jaynes, catastrophic events, mass migrations, and the advent of written language caused the bicameral mind to break down, resulting in the “voices of the gods” fading away. In its place, subjective consciousness and the concept of the I emerged, a shift that Jaynes traces back to figures like Solon of Athens around 600 B.C., who championed the introspective concept of “Know thyself”. Nørretranders points out that while ancient man was purely a Me, modern man suffers from the opposite delusion: he believes he is only an I, falsely assuming that his conscious mind controls everything.

The Evolution of Religion as the Struggle Between I and Me Nørretranders uses Jaynes’s historical framework to explain the psychological shift from polytheism to monotheism:

• Polytheism corresponds to the bicameral mind, where numerous gods represented the various nonconscious urges directing human behavior.
• Monotheism corresponds to the conscious mind. When the I emerged, it insisted on having total control over the person. However, the I was continually confronted with the reality that it could not control the vast, unpredictable emotions and capabilities of the nonconscious Me. To resolve this, the I projected everything it could not explain about the Me onto the concept of a single, all-powerful God.
• Moral Evolution: Nørretranders divides this progression into three phases. First was the preconscious phase (acting directly on gods’ commands). Second was the socially conscious phase (represented by Judaism), where free will was regulated externally by social contracts and laws like the Ten Commandments. Finally came the personally conscious phase (represented by Christianity), where consciousness turned inward, and the I was suddenly held morally responsible not just for external actions, but for internal desires and thoughts.

Summary

To honour your request of “enough thinking,” let’s perform a final “doodle compression” of this journey. We will add Julian Jaynes to the map and provide a master summary of the two icebergs.

The Final Layer: Julian Jaynes’ “Analog I” and “Metaphor Me”

Jaynes provides the “software architecture” for the tip of the iceberg:

• The Tip (The Analog ‘I’): This is not the “real” you, but a metaphorical agent that exists only in a mental “mind-space”. It functions by “narratizing”—fitting life into a story with a past and future.

• The Waterline (The Metaphor ‘Me’): This is the self as an object, seen by the “Analog I”.

• The Submerged Bulk (The Non-Conscious): Jaynes agrees with Nørretranders that most of our behavior—reasoning, learning, and even complex tasks—happens without consciousness. Below this lies the Bicameral foundation, the ancient neurological structure where “voices” (the gods) once directed human variety.

---

The Master Iceberg Map: A Synthesis

Iceberg Level	The Mind (The “User Illusion”)	System Change (Meadows & Co.)	The “Dive” (The Strategy)
THE TIP (Low Leverage)	The “I” / Analog Agent (16 bits/sec, Narrative, Maps, Conscious Purpose, “Front Parlor”)	Numbers / Parameters (Taxes, data, signals, symptoms, goal-seeking)	Standardize & Signal: Use the “I” to monitor and veto, but don’t expect it to drive the system.
THE WATERLINE (Mid Leverage)	The “Me” / Appreciative System: (Norms, “Backroom Boys”, Languaging, Social Tokens)	Rules & Information Flows: (Feedback loops, transparency, “The Situation Room”, Context-markers)	Close the Loops: Make the hidden bulk visible through biofeedback and open information flow.
THE DEEP BULK (High Leverage)	The Non-Conscious / Autopoiesis: (11 million bits/sec, “Me”, Gaia, Biological Life, The Pattern that Connects)	Paradigms / Mindsets: (The power to transcend maps, Harmony-Seeking, Systemic Wisdom)	Release & Re-pattern: Change the underlying paradigm to allow the “Me” to self-organize into harmony.

The Closing Insight

The “Thinking” we have done here reveals a single, recurring warning from all these masters: The “I” at the tip is a Map, but the “Me” in the deep is the Terrain.

If we try to fix the world (Climate Change) or our lives by only rearranging the labels on the Map (the tip), the Iceberg will continue its course toward the abyss. To truly intervene, we must have the “Composure” to step away from the narrative “I” and engage with the biological, non-linear, and infinite complexity of the “Me” below the waterline.

End of “Thinking” Phase. Ready to move into action whenever you are.