Organism and Environment

We are mammals first then humans because of the limbic brain.

Mammals need a few things to feel safe. Otherwise, they are in constant anxiety and may go so far as to eat their children to protect them from the anxiety.

The organism is in an environment. The instinct is always to gain data about the environment to decide whether it is safe. The more a mammal knows about its environment, the safer it feels.

If it is aware of danger, it retreats to safety. It enters the environment (go outside of safety) to survive (hunt for food, water).

Examples:

• I’m the organism in the FPC 2 cohort. Everyone else is the environment
• I’m the organism, my team or another department is the environment

Environments shift constantly, creating threat.

When there’s a watering hole, mammals go there for survival. But predators go there too. When the zebra and lion are drinking water, the zebra feels threatened by the lion. The zebra has no choice but to be there.

But if the zebra knew the lion has just recently eaten, there is some safety.

If there’s a choice, the zebra will never stand next to the lion. But it does so because there’s no choice, its needed for survival.

The zebra cannot change into a lion to survive.

But humans can change and become different people, depending on what container they’re in.

In this analogy, Humans want to be the lion to avoid being eaten but they are unhappy. This is also related to the Paradoxical Theory of Change.

People feel safer when there is more information in the environment (related to vulnerability). When someone is angry but it is left unsaid, threat goes up.

Before going into higher order work (emotions and relationships need to be taken care of first before learning), your primitive brain needs to be taken care of first.

3 Types of Environment

1. Spacial environment: seating arrangements, building layout etc. Asking 7 people to sit in an inner circle while everyone else forms an outer circle to observe them already causes members of the inner circle to feel unsafe. Other examples: financial environments, organization charts (who gets to talk to who).

2. Linguistic environment: how we judge and assess one another. E.g, culture, policies, what is allowable or not.

   There are many things we could observe linguistically that could make us feel unsafe, but they boil down to these Linguistic Behaviours From Lack Of Psychological Safety. These behaviours show up when people feel unsafe, which causes a new observer to feel unsafe as well.

3. Material environment: material resource e.g food, sleep, exercise, salary. When these things are not taken care of, it causes people to feel unsafe. Singapore is obsessed with this and is very good at it.