What is happening?
Have you ever gone looking for a job in a field in order to gain experience in that field only to discover that jobs are exclusively available to applicants who already have experience? Have you ever sat down with a bag of chips and discovered that the more you eat, the harder it is to stop? Have you ever been at a concert where a microphone gets too close to an ampliphier and generates a painfully annoying squeal? These are examples of feedback loops. In complex systems, the dynamic equilibrium of such loops serves to articulate worlds according to stable, meaningful patterns. When not in equilibrium, they can snowball out of control.
Insofar as we engage with the world and experience the world through this engagement, we're always involved in feedback loops. We don't notice this since the everyday feedback loops aren't the positive kind that can snowball out of control; they're the negative kind that maintain the status quo. We get into our rhythms and stay there. We develop habits, good or bad, that we find it difficult to set aside. Our lives take on a certain routine and proceed as if by inertia. An awareness of such rhythms can be calming, and if our routines aren't serving us well, our awareness of them will be the first step toward making a needed change.
At a more fundamental level, we care about what we're doing because it's through our engaged activities that we interpret what existence means for us. Everything we do counts as taking a stand on what it means to be.
