Beyond Linear Thinking: Changing the Way We Live and Work by Linda Seger

Author:Linda Seger [Seger, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Typewriter Press
Published: 2022-08-03T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

The Web

Consider The Web. It combines The Line, The Circle, and The Spiral. It integrates all these forms into a more humane model. In Web Thinking, The Line connects rather than separates. The Circle is inclusive. It ripples outward without boundaries. The Spiral becomes relational with you, or the project, in the Center. No longer is The Spiral solitary. With the help of others, you build and develop and transform. The Web is about connections—the close connections leading to team-building and community, and the far-reaching connections linking us globally. It is about weaving our lives and weaving our world, and when necessary, reweaving it.

In the Beginning

In many mythologies, such as Native American, African, and Caribbean, Spider Woman created the world. Professional storyteller Kathleen Zundell tells the story of this creation: “In the beginning, there was only Spider Woman. Spider Woman, sometimes called Thought Woman, got an idea to think up the whole world and all its creatures. She took a strand of thread and stretched it East to West and another North to South. From deep within herself she wove the web which was earth. She wove the people, their stories, the good and the bad. But when people forgot about the thread and forgot about their connections to each other, Spider Woman destroyed the world—just as a spider will destroy her own web. She wove her web again, destroyed it, wove it again. Any part that was broken, she would delicately and patiently reweave, recreate, repair, and rebuild.”1

Like Spider Woman, we weave and reweave our lives. When necessary, we destroy and rebuild our web of relationships. We leave a dead-end job, we get out of an abusive relationship, we move to another city, creating a new and hopefully better Web out of our own bodies and souls.

Others also weave and create our lives for us because we are also part of their Webs. Sometimes they help us create wondrous Webs. They advise us, share their ideas and thoughts, challenge and confront us, and we become more courageous and discerning people as a result.

They may weave their curses into our lives. They entrap us by their webs of power and control. They abuse us, destroy our visions, deceive us, and at every connecting link on our Web, place a lie and a betrayal of who we are or can be.

At any point, like Spider Woman, we can decide to take our Web down and rebuild it. We can make decisions to improve our life and change our circumstances.

We Are Born to Be Connected

Web Thinking begins by recognizing our connections and knowing separation is not how life works. Theology, biology, physics, chemistry, and many other disciplines have reached the same conclusion: we are born connected and remain connected, whether we like it or not.

In the groundbreaking book The Pursuit of Loneliness, author Philip Slater says, “The problem with individualism is not that it is immoral but that it is incorrect. The universe does not consist of a lot of unrelated particles but is an interconnected whole.

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