F r a c t a l s
Fractals are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop replicating at all scales. The stories we tell ourselves can be seen as fractals opening up new possibilities for change. A fractal space holds incredible potential. As fractals, we build our future one thought, emotion, and action at a time.
Julia-set fractal pattern created by the FRAX phone application: mathematics made beautiful!.
The ongoing feedback loops between people in any relationship-system are much like fractals I feel; repeating the process of communication, yielding connection, love, or tension, even conflict and chaos. For humans to become better at understanding, navigating, and communicating in all our relationship-systems, we must up-skill our systems-intelligence; repeating what works, and discard what does not.
Mandelbrot was the mathematician who put fractals into words in the 1970-ies. Fractals are never-ending, infinitely complex patterns he explained, and self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems – the image of chaos! If you divide a fractal pattern into parts you get a nearly identical reduced-size copy of the whole!
The World Economic Forum, in their Future of Jobs reports, acknowledges the importance of the workforce learning together in systems to co-create solutions suited for the challenges of our times. The metaphor of fractal growth and how we grow our relational capacity as humans may inspire us in our understanding of skilling-up our human intelligences in relationship-systems. We can only really do that by engaging fully in the relationship systems we are a part of; whether at work or in private. To engage fully, we need to up-skill our learning-capabilities from our innate human traits by understanding that how we think, feel, speak and act has an effect on ourselves and on others.
Fractals are everywhere: clouds, snowflakes, mountains, river networks, cauliflower or broccoli, and many of the systems in physical bodies. Natural objects, including humans, are composed of many different types of fractals woven into each other, each with parts that have different fractal dimensions: our lungs, our circulatory system, our brains are all fractal structures.