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“Two can accomplish more than twice as one. If one falls, the other pulls him up; but if a man falls when he is alone he is in trouble. One standing alone can be defeated, but two can stand back to back and conquer; three is even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.”

[as quoted by Philip Holland in How To Start A Business Without Quitting Your Job (Ten Speed Press, California, 1993). p. 148.]

H	OLON is a new word. Coined by Arthur Koestler no more than three decades ago, I only came across it a few months before starting to write this book. It is not even familiar to many of the

intellectuals and academicians I have mentioned this word to. The terms synergism and synergy are more familiar, that is, many people have at least heard this word and some have even used it once or twice in conversation.

It is unfortunate that people have been allowed to remain at much distance from the potent realities being represented by these words, for it is getting to be increasingly apparent that these realities are actively present right within our very being as humans, and very much alive in our interactions among one another and with the other parts of the Cosmos, indeed, with the very nature of the Cosmos itself!

There is an almost complete lack of awareness among most humans about the power packed in the phenomenon of the holon and in the operation of the synergism principle that packs such power in everything, including the immense creative capabilities of the human will. We are leaving virtually such dynamic energies untapped. This while many of us sulk in frustration, helplessness and defeatism amid heavy difficulties that can all be overcome by consciously and properly applying the principle of synergism. This is happening to a great number of us all the time, and all the feelings of frustration and helplessness have been understood to be the normal mode of existence for humans. And this has been directly happening to each of us from time to time. Don’t we all wish we could reduce the instances and duration of these periods of darkness in our hearts and minds?

Consider this moving challenge for a decisive mindset shift, raised by Dr. Leo F. Buscalia in the first chapter of his book, Personhood: The Art of Being Fully Human (Ballantine Books, New York, 1978):

“The knowledge that we make our own life is not new, still most of us will resist it for if we were to accept it, we might be forced to change. We might have to face the pain and emptiness which arises from the knowledge of the unrealized self. We might have to assume the frightening, the uncertain and demanding search for its actualization. We may finally have to cease blaming others and take upon ourselves the full responsibility for creating our own lives. There is no doubt that it is much easier to accept ourselves as we have been portrayed – helpless, hopeless, frightened failures, impotent to realize our actualization needs.

“When we are born, we are almost all unrealized potential, and a thousand new possibilities are present in each one of us. We can choose to be born again at any time and accept the challenge of the selves we have yet to meet, for the same is still true.

“The world, too, is mostly unactualized potential waiting upon us for realization. The responsibility, then, is ours. The manifestation of every person and the world in which we live is the minimum requirement of our existence, its major purpose and its only hope. The negligence of any of us to become a fully functioning part of the whole, no matter who we are or where we may be, will be potential which will be forever lost. We are of value to the degree to which we are constantly actualizing as the unique persons we are at each moment of our life.”

We only have to realize the reality, to open our minds and hearts to this constant truth: The Force of Dynamic Oneness is in each of us. When anyone seeks that you be conscious of this, she or he may say “May the Force be with you.” This is just one of the latter-day versions of the old Latin “Dominus vobiscum,” which has been translated into English in post-Vatican II Roman Catholic masses as “The Lord be with you.” For God, Allah, Abba, Bathala, in my firm conviction, is the Loving and Creative Synergy of ALL Synergies, our supreme and complete oneness, the hand of which we are all the varying but teaming-up fingers, the vine of which we are all the living branches.

Levels of human development, and harmony in this world would undoubtedly soar to amazing heights if we could only tap this reality fully, or even just partially. Actually, we have started to comprehend these, thus words like “synergism” and “holon” have emerged in human vocabulary to start to refer to them. Actually, we have started to apply the principle, even if largely instinctively and intuitively and therefore often inconsistently. And success at such application of this principle has been behind the sense of another word of relatively-recent currency: empowerment.

To further and help hasten the empowerment of the individual humans and the masses of people making up various communities of varying scopes, we have to successfully advance paradigm shifts for empowerment in the thoughts, words and deeds of at least a critical mass of the people.

Desiderata reminds us all: “whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” But whoever they may be among us who have learned to appreciate the process as a wonderful synergy of episodes or stages of such magnificent unfolding can opt to actively help to hasten the shift from periods of lessons-laden suffering to periods of widespread bliss in human actualization.

The word holon is a new term. But there is a very old word that also refers to it. This term is applied to those persons who, aside from knowing that they are individual players in this world, also know fully that they are parts of one much greater Whole, and are therefore not merely of this world. To their holistic mind-set and behavior a very old word has been assigned. That word is “holy,” and it is also directly related to the source of the words “heal” and “health.” Huli mo?

H	EWING as closely as possible to how the majority of the people would put their own meanings into the words they come across, by using that alphabetical survey result of word-usage, called the dictionary, I

seek to choose well my words as a writer, because words like the thoughts they represent, are powerful.

Etymology, the science of word origins, is important in any complex or profound study. So, when I decided to study the phenomenon of synergism, I started with etymology. Synonyms and near-synonyms are fine, like the words “teamwork” and “harmony” and even “love” for synergism and synergy, but I felt I had something to learn, a nuance or even a basic element, by looking at the origin of what has become my favorite word.

Of course metaphors are important, too. They are more useful in explaining a phenomenon to others than in trying to understand it in the first place. Still, my attempt to explain to others may be a very important start for those others to grasp a phenomenon. The problem with metaphors is that they can only approximate certain characteristics of a phenomenon but not really convey the phenomenon exactly as it is. That is why in trying to explain synergism I use not just one metaphor but a set of metaphors. Some of these metaphors may actually be living illustrations of the principle in action.

My Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition (1991), gives this definition for the prefix syn-

syn- (sin) Gr. <syn, with; earlier xyn> prefix with, together, at the same time [synesthesia, syncarpous]. It becomes, by assimilation, syl- before l; sym- before b, m or p; and sys- before or in words where it reflects original combining with a word containing an initial aspirate, or (h) sound. (underscoring mine)

This togetherness is reflected in the definitions of many words that start with this prefix: synthesis, symmetry, symbiosis, syncretism, symphony, sympathy, and so on. And, of course, this togetherness is reflected in the definition given by the same dictionary for the words synergy and synergism. (By the way, the pronunciation of this prefix is constant, where the vowel sound is a short i and not a long one. Many people in the Philippines tend to pronounce syn- in synergism as if it rhymed with “spine”.)

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary would add as another meaning "the doctrine that in regeneration there is a cooperation of divine grace and human activity."

According to Charles Hampden-Turner (Maps of the Mind, Collier Books, NY): Synergy comes from the Greek synergia, `a working with', and describes the capacity of two forces, persons, or structures of information to optimize one another and achieve mutual enhancement.

As I understand it, synergy refers to the coming together at a certain high level of quality; and synergism is the principle that explains what comes from this high-quality coming together. The principle reveals and explains a "value-added" to the arithmetical total of the respective magnitudes of individual parts to result in synergy, with a perceptible increase in magnitude of the total combined effect of these same elements. We go back to definitions of synergy and synergism in latter sections of this chapter.

I had earlier searched high and low for a Filipino word to capture this precise sense, and the closest I got was "bayanihan" which has, over the centuries, largely lost its sting and original meaning. That's why I thought of coining "saniblakas," a new word altogether, the same thing I did in 1991 for "sense of history" by coining the word "kamalaysayan." And like in the case of that campaign for sense of history, I started an organization in 1996, which eventually became a foundation, and gave it the same coined-word name, this time in the form of a proper noun that has done away with the hyphen. ‘Sanib,’ in this case an intransitive verb denoting a mutual action, takes the place of the prefix “syn-“, and “lakas” as the translation for the word “energy.”

At least as much as I was proud to represent the Asian Social Institute in the panel of presentors in that Lambat-Liwanag conference, I proudly represented as well the SanibLakas ng Taongbayan Foundation.

Using metaphors would be a good way to illustrate the principle of synergism. At least some of these metaphors are really synergies in themselves, actual illustrations of synergism in action. Others, though commonly or at least occasionally used, are not as appropriate.

The coconut-reed broom is widely used in the Philippines where it is called "walis tingting" in the Filipino language. The walis-tingting is a favorite metaphor in illustrating the saying, "in union there is strength." After all, it is easy to break all the reeds one by one but together they are formidable.

This broom goes beyond the saying and illustrates synergism. You would need the standard stoutness of such a broom to sweep the yard, and it would be difficult to sweep even just one-eighth of the same area with just half that stoutness. The thinner that broom gets, the more difficult it is to use it even for sweeping just a miniscule portion of the whole area.

Still, as a symbolic illustration of synergism, the banig or our native mat made out of leaf-strips woven together is apparently better. While synergizers are trying to kick the habit of comparing things, at least judgmentally, the comparison between these metaphors is important to point out a nuance. This is actually an important nuance in the study of synergism as it applies to humans. You may be wondering why…

Let us shift temporarily to a comparison between a group of headless fish crowded really very close together in a can of sardines and a school of fish that are swimming together. The swimming fish are not as close together as the sardines in the can, but the latter only crowd together because they are forced to do so by the walls of the can. The swimming fish are together by choice, or if you will, by instinct, not by any container. This is parallel to the saying "birds of the same feather flock together," and is more akin to some equivalent tendencies in physics-- cohesion and gravity.

Flying ducks and flying geese are not only symbolic of synergism. Their V-formation flying actually illustrates a measurable mechanical efficiency even though none of the ducks has read any books on aerodynamics.

Back to the broom and the mat, the reed sticks in the broom are crowded together by a "container," or more precisely, by a band of some other material. And once some of the sticks fall off, the band gets more loose and more and more sticks "escape." To instantly "free" all the reed sticks from the arrangement they had been forced into, you just have to cut or pull off the band. But you cannot "unweave" the woven mat as easily. The very arrangement of the strips in relation to one another keeps them together, and you don't really need an external container.

Neither the reed sticks nor the leaf strips are predisposed to unite and stay together. The sticks have to be kept together by a band and the strips are kept together by the way they are arranged (woven) around one another. The formation-flying fowls and the schools of fish are much better illustrations of the synergism principle because their natural wisdom or "instinct" makes them social beings comparable to humans and or often even better at it than humans.

The jigsaw puzzle offers another nuance or angle. Each jigsaw puzzle is unique on two counts:

First, it carries its own distinct part of the total picture, such that the whole picture cannot be complete if one particular piece is missing. While there is some truth to the saying that "no one is indispensable," there is at least as much truth to the assertion that "every single individual is very important."

Second, each piece has a unique shape. Even with a hammer, you cannot force-in any piece into the wrong hole, as far as regular jigsaw puzzles are concerned.

And yet in the uniqueness of each piece, all the pieces have two commonalities: First, they are all carrying parts of the same picture. Each piece reflects the beauty of the whole and contributes to the beauty of the whole. Second, they are all shaped to be "predisposed to unite and stay together." They are interlocking. If you pull at the corner piece of a completed puzzle, chances are the entire thing will get pulled too.

If all these points of uniqueness and of commonalities are fully appreciated in the jigsaw puzzle piece as a metaphor for synergism, the synergies we build among humans can benefit greatly from this principle. At present, however, we see many human groupings reflecting more faithfully the images of the walis tingting and the headless sardines in the can!

Here’s how filmmaker and filmmaking educator Surf Reyes discussed the jigsaw puzzle piece in a reaction paper presented at a conference on the empowering paradigm for the educational system in June 2002 (underscoring in the original):

“I’m sure all of you have experienced putting jigsaw puzzle pieces together to form one picture. It all starts with a cluttered jumble of separate and seemingly meaningless pieces that, together, form one meaningful picture. Let us experience the reality more closely. The pieces look quite alike in shape, and some even in color, yet no two pieces are actually alike. Each jigsaw puzzle piece is totally unique, with its own shape and colors, and designed to precisely lock with other pieces to form that one beautiful picture. Each individual piece has no real significance or meaning except as part of the whole. So each “I” has no meaning except within “We”. Hold that in your imagination for a while to serve as a mirror image of the core reality of the oneness of all. Consider all of us and everything in our environment, as the jigsaw puzzle pieces that form the one universal picture. From this core reality naturally spring all the core values.”

Actually, the jigsaw puzzle pieces do not really start out as as a cluttered jumble. A single beautiful picture is first printed and glued on some thick cardboard and this undergoes the die-cut process that cuts up the picture into those little puzzle pieces we start with in every jigsaw puzzle session. After working on it for hours or even days on end, we get to appreciate the picture many times over, because we undergo the process of appreciating the individual pieces and their intended interrelationships. The beauty and glory of the whole is always magnified and appreciated manifold by appreciating its parts and the latter’s process of coming together in synergy.

Gravity is no longer simplistically viewed in terms of "what goes up must come down," no longer just in the matter of falling. It is an attraction force between two lumps of matter, which Newton had long computed to be directly proportional to the product of the mass of one object and the mass of the other, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects' respective centers of gravity. We don't have to go any further on that.

What bears mentioning here is the fact that gravity exists automatically between any pair of two objects (no matter how far apart they are) and that this force is an attraction. There is no known opposite equivalent to this, unlike in the case of magnetic forces where there is both attraction and repulsion. This should give us some hint about the grand design of the Universe, or a clue as to why it had to start off with the centrifugal momentum of a "Big Bang". We go back to this in a later chapter.

I actually agonized about magnets for some time. All literature on magnetism that I have come across in books and in the InterNet state, as if as an overriding maxim, that “like poles repel, and opposite poles attract." I could easily illustrate synergies among like-minded people, among "birds of the same feather flocking together," and as stated in another article, I am quite comfortable to consider diversity as the dynamic element in synergetic combinations. But how in heaven's name was I to illustrate the synergy of opposite poles?

After months of searching for an answer to this puzzle, I got one that I consider now to be the more valid view of magnets. I no longer focus on the poles, for after all the poles are just like entrances and exist points of a highway and what is important is the movement of vehicles within the highway, through and around it. I now look more on the direction of flow of the magnetic force, what is also called the "magnetic flux." And my own substitute to the usual maxim is this: Like flows attract; opposite flows repel.

Like poles will repel as much as it would be illogical to connect the south-bound lane of one highway to the north-bound lane of another, or create a closed passageway between the exit door of one building and the exit door of another (where would all the people go?) or create a closed passageway between the entrance of one building and the entrance of another (who would use it?). The same is true with blood vessels regenerating their connections after they get severed.

Having gone beyond the "attract-repel" puzzle, I studied magnets more closely, and started moving completely away from the "attract-repel" focus. As a kid I was always playing with magnets, even dismantling the tiny motors in my toy cars just to get the magnets in them. But I was endlessly experimenting on making metal pieces stick to them, and magnetizing ordinary screwdrivers and big nails and making metal pieces stick to those. It was very recently that I started paying more attention to magnets affecting metal pieces that do not stick to them, metal pieces that do not even move towards them, the phenomenon of the magnetic field and its invisible but very real effects.

Having experimented on magnets affecting metal pieces that are just lying still close enough to them, and having read about how some metal pieces gradually become magnets just because a strong magnet nearby had started aligning a growing number of their atoms along a uniform magnetic field, I plunged into a deep study of magnets as metaphors of synergism in a very profound way. It looks like it's going to be a long but exciting study, and I’d be glad to share observations and ideas with people interested enough to study applications of the pertinent physics formulas similar to but more powerful than the formulas involving gravitation.

But this early, it can be said that because of this phenomenon of "contagious magnetism," the magnet is a unique metaphor for synergism. After all, coconut-palm reeds do not tie themselves together in a bind, the leaf-strips do not weave themselves together into mats and the jigsaw puzzle pieces do not really jump into their proper places. But atoms in a magnetic field do align themselves in bigger and bigger numbers and strengthen that field to make more and more atoms to do the same. Thus, a magnet system grows stronger and stronger by itself, untouched by human hands. The origin of lodestones bear this out. And scientists are using the magnetic flux from unmoved chunks of lodestone to triangulate past sites of the magnetic/true north pole and the magnetic/true south pole of the earth, where spin axis meets the earth surface.

Consider that in contrast to the force of gravity, which is indirectly proportional to the square of the distance between the attracting parties, the magnitude of the magnetic force is inversely proportional to the cube of the distance between the magnetic objects that are interacting. This means that a strong magnet which is not near to any other magnet aligned or not aligned with it can, by the influence of its magnetic field, align atoms in all metallic objects all around it, and, by itself, create many new magnets around itself and create a growing synergy of a growing set of aligned magnets much closely positioned around it. This is a case of a synergy ever-growing by itself. If the first magnet in the neighborhood is rather weak, the entire process ensues but takes much more time to complete.

Stephen R. Covey wrote in his The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Simon and Schuster, NY): "What is synergy? Simply defined it means that the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. It means that the relationship which the parts have to each other is a part in and of itself. It is not only a part, but the most catalytic, the most empowering, the most unifying, and the most exciting part."

R. Buckminster Fuller (in Critical Path, St. Martin's Press, NY) describes synergism as "the behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts."

And we have the simplest statement from Abraham Maslow, quoted in Maps of the Mind (Collier Books, NY): "Synergy is indivisible."

In his foreword to the SanibLakas Foundation pamphlet on cooperative education on synergism (2000), former Bulacan Gov. Roberto Pagdanganan described synergy as "a fusion to create a newer dimension broader that the totality of the parts."

During a SanibLakas-convened “Sharings at the Park” in 2001, Dr. Ernesto R. Gonzales, secretary-general of the Lambat-Liwanag Network of Centers for Empowering Paradigms, said: “Synergism is a process where the essence of life grows. When synergy enters her orbit, the life-giving process of persons, as well as of institutions, begins to flourish. In our homeland, this is the ignition point for genuine progress and nationhood.”

In another sharing, Dr. Mina Ramirez, president of the Asian Social Institute in Manila, defined synergism as “the interweaving of ourselves into the web of energies that are life-promoting of all life-forms. It is being with the spirit of life itself, harnessing ethical for the good and sacred in us and in all of God’s Creation!” This dovetails with how synergism was described by SanibLakas Foundation’s Palawan-based Board Member Romy Lee B. Ancheta: “getting back to our Creator, who is the essence of all synergies.”

Lambat-L:iwanag Network Council Vice Chair Enrique D. Torres, also the Board Chairman of the Philippine Human Rights Information Center said that he “found synergism as an effective unifier of both the individual and collective efforts to advance human development and harmony,” and that his “current commitment to human rights will be enhanced by a wider awareness and deeper understanding of synergism.”

Luis B. Gorgonio, also of PhilRights and SanibLakas, wrote in the March 1998 issue of the Sanib-Sinag journal: “Synergism is a journey from the self to kapwa. Individualism happens when the self is locked into itself, calls everything beyond its own narrow confines as the other, and separates from the others. Synergism is a movement from an individualist self to a shared self or kapwa. In synergism the other-ness is lost and the self becomes a unique trait that innately longs for communion.”

Mila Reyes Garcia, chair of the SanibLakas Human Resources Development Committee, describes synergism as “the Divine Plan, the scheme of things.” She explains: We were created with different personalities, gifts, talents, etc. The Creator apparently meant for us to complement and supplement one another, to work together harmoniously. Look around us, it’s happening everyday. In building a house, there is an architect, an engineer, the carpenters. Each one is an essential part of the whole.” Further, she says: “We should flow together, like little streams flowing into rivers, and rivers flowing into the sea, till there is just one huge wave of harmony. That, to me, is synergy.”

And Maraya Chebat, who was behind the prize-winning initial draft of the Earth Charter, emphasized the role of healthy attitude on diversity: “Only when we can expect the differences of one another can we learn to synergize.”

The definition of synergism would not be complete without even just an earnest attempt to explain how it works.

It has been proven both in measurable and immeasurable terms that operation of the synergism principle results in value-added, in some sort of magnification of total value. The eyebrow-raising arithmetical formula usually used to describe the operation of synergism is "one plus one equals three," which is akin to the quote ascribed to the wise King Solomon at the very beginning of this book. And the question that may follow is about the source of this "magic," where does this come from? It took some years of hunting before I could arrive at an answer that would do fine for me, at least for the time being.

Not all combinations of individual elements make up a synergy, because the precise design or arrangement of the combination may not optimize the performance of these individual elements. We can see this in frequent manifestations of "bad teamwork" (actually a lack of teamwork) or bad management. In worst-case examples, the resulting equation is "one plus one equals zero" because the capabilities or the actions of the elements actually cancel out one another.

The legendary UCLA and NBA center Bill Walton once said: “In basketball, you can be the greatest player in the world and lose every game, because a team will always beat an individual.”

It is not necessarily true that "in union there is strength," because synergy cannot easily be attained and sustained accidentally. Ask the good sports team coaches and the good managers. And they will agree that it does entail a lot of study, experimentation, evaluation and painstaking improvement to build the right "chemistry," the great winning teamplay.

The idea that organizations automatically generate strength and empower their members is based on the illusion that "all sorts of combinations are synergies." Wrong! In fact, the behavior or non-behavior of many organizations all around us has been giving the value of organizations a bad name. For this reason, there are many people who have come to stay away from organizations altogether.

I chanced upon my tentative answer to the question where does the value-added come from when I listened to the valedictory speech delivered by the outgoing president of a local business club. She said the outgoing officers were proud to report having fulfilled their induction-day promise to be a "TEAM." She said that for them, "TEAM" as an acronym has always stood for "Together, Each Achieves More."

Never mind the little syntax awkwardness here. The meaning is unmistakably clear, anyway. The statement really flashed inside my mind that here was the answer I had been looking for -- Really close togetherness can actually increase the magnitude of capability or actual action of each individual element. If teamwork or harmony, in short, the attainment of synergy, can increase the capacity or output of each element, why would anybody be surprised at all that the total would be bigger or even much bigger?

Take a look at the simple equation below. It shows a simple arithmetical sum, using the usual plus sign:

Now, let's look at this second equation, using a "weird looking" plus sign using four converging arrows to resemble the usual plus sign, but which changes the operation from simple addition to a synergetic combination

It is not as if the members just put in their best together and then "a magical power from above" (as in "deus ex machina") suddenly grants a "counterpart fund" to add to their total. Instead, this "magical power" apparently works, through synergism, through complementation or mutual encouragement or both, to increase the output of each one in the synergy, thereby automatically increasing the total. And this total belongs to the entity collective really distinct from any which individual member and distinct from all of them taken separately. This is the distinct reality of their harmonious collectivity, of their synergy.

The synergism principle pertains to a "value-added" to synergy, a perceptible increase in magnitude over the total effect the same elements would have if each were to be acting separately.

The perceptible increase in magnitude is even physically measurable. In his article "Synergism and the Holy Spirit," Rev. Roy Shepherd shares with us how a police unit conducted a physics experiment after losing their championship in the police games. Using a special “pull meter”; they measured the maximum force exerted by each member of their team. Then they measured the force exerted by the whole team; the team result was 1½ times more than the sum of the individual team members.

Some other words are akin in meaning to synergy: teamwork, harmony, complementation, but the only principle I know of that explains the magnification or "value-added" resulting from the attainment of synergy, of harmony, of teamwork, of complementation, is synergism. And the principle has much more to it than simply knowing that "in union there is strength"; in fact the principle of synergism would qualify our notion of "strength in numbers" to be conditional and would offer workable ways to raise the quality of unity and consequently attain much more "value-added," much more magnification of capability or effect.

A certain Dan Zedra was quoted (in an attractive poster showing wild geese in formation flying), saying: "Instinctively, the Great Northern Geese travel thousands of miles in perfect formation -- and therein lies the secret. Formation flying is 70 percent more efficient than flying alone."

Sean Covey (Stephen's son), in his own book The Seven Habits of Highly-Successful Teenagers, gives a slightly higher figure for the aerodynamic efficiency of formation flying -- 71 percent, explaining that when a goose flaps its wings, it creates an updrift for the goose that follows. "Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it immediately feels the resistance of trying to fly alone and quickly gets back into formation. As the lead goose gets tired he will rotate to the back of the 'V' (formation) and allows another goose to take the lead position."

(He adds something else that goes beyond aerodynamics: "The geese in the back honk to encourage those in front." And this: "Finally, when one of the geese gets sick or is wounded and falls out of formation, two geese will follow it down to help and protect it. They will stay with the injured goose until it is better or dies, and they will join a new formation or create their own to catch up with the group.")

Diversity is not something to be tolerated or "solved" in the context of synergy-building. While commonalities among the elements provide the bonding element, the glue or the magnetic waves among them, diversity is the enriching, catalyzing factor that gives the collectivity its dynamism.

In chemistry, you cannot expect any chemical reaction to occur when mixing together quantities of identical substances. In an orchestra, the richness of the musical sound produced comes from the wide variety of instruments played a single sequence of notes in the arrangement. In choral group singing, the blending of voices cannot occur and be enjoyed if all would sing only the melody, the "first voice."

Despite the diversities there is need for some commonality over certain ground rules. Despite the divergences, and especially because these divergences exist, diverse people or groups coming together into the process of building partnerships and sustainable unities must have at least a modicum of agreement that:

Manifestations of synergism abound in Nature, where every ecosystem, the complex sum of all symbiotic relationships among all species in a given area, exists and thrives in greater stability the more harmoniously interacting and interdependent species participate and the more diverse these species are. Harmony in this sense does not imply that predators would hunt and kill their prey very gently; rather it is in the interdependence preponderant in the entire food web, in pollination processes, in seed dispersal, in umbrella canopies and carpets of grass bushes, in everything that makes a jungle a jungle.

Applications of synergism abound in physics, chemistry and engineering. The very term synergism was first popularized as it pertained to the combining of substances as active ingredients in pharmaceutical preparations. In chemistry, you cannot expect any chemical reaction to occur when mixing together quantities of identical substances, and the substances in tandem were proven to work wonders in synergy so much so that the medicines were approved for marketing according to their therapeutic claims.

Synergies in engineering pertain to mechanical advantage and durability from precise combination and arrangement of elements. Stephen Covey (in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) mentions that: If you put two pieces of wood together, they will hold much more than the total of the (maximum) weight held by each separately.

Synergies in Substance Complementations or “Composite materials” (combined characteristics of plastic, glass, metals, ceramics, etc., in various uses, especially in construction and electronics.) From “How Things Work Today” (published by Scientific American, 2000): “Composites are made by combining two or more materials in order to maximize their useful properties and minimize their weaknesses.

One of the earliest composites was developed by the ancient Greeks who inserted iron rods into marble to strengthen it. Steel rods are now used in this way to reinforce concrete. Modern composites were developed from light and strong materials for the aerospace industry. Most modern composites consist of fibres of one material tightly bound into another material called a matrix. The matrix binds the fibres together like an adhesive and makes them more resistant to damage, while the fibres make the matrix stronger and stiffer.”

From R. Buckminster Fuller’s website on synergy and synergism: “Synergy alone explains metals increasing their strengths. All alloys are synergetic. Chrome-nickel-steel has an extraordinary total behavior. In fact, it is the high cohesive strength and structural stability of chrome-nickel-steel at enormous temperatures that has made possible the jet engine. The principle of the jet was invented by the squid and the jellyfish long ago. What made possible man's use of the jet principle was his ability to concentrate enough energy and to release it suddenly enough to give him tremendous thrust. The kinds of heat that accompany the amount of energies necessary for a jet to fly would have melted all the engines of yesterday. Not until you had chrome-nickel-steel was it possible to make a successful jet engine, stable at the heats involved. The jet engine has changed the whole relationship of man to the Earth. And it is a change in the behavior of the whole of man and in the behavior of whole economics, brought about by synergy.”

The physical reality of physical synergies is illustrated in a reversed sort of way by a new technological product from Korea that claims, with statistics from satisfied users, to reduce the total electric energy consumption of a crowded set of appliances and other electric equipment. The technology applied is called “electromagnetic field harmonizer.”

The way I understand it, this is how it works: All electric currents in all electric appliances and equipment create electromagnetic fields around them that are vectorial, that is, with a definite direction. Crowding many appliances and other electric equipment that have strong electromagnetic fields in varying directions, create a certain degree of clashes among these fields, and creating more resistance in each of the electric circuits (appliances, equipment) involved, and turns part of the electric energy into unutilized heat energy. The gadget solves this problem by harmonizing these electromagnetic fields (I still don’t know how it does that), instead of allowing them to clash all around with one another. This does not only prevent the “clashing-fields” effect, it allows each of the circuits to be helped along by the harmonized electromagnetic fields, and the mutual-helping for greater mechanical efficiency is synergism at work. It is also safer for the health of persons who frequent areas where the magnetic fields would otherwise be clashing.

Gravity is an attractive, centripetal, and cohesive force. If gravity is not being countered by an opposite, repulsive force, it would be logical that the expanding Universe would be slowing down in its expansion, eventually to stop and then begin to contract. But some scientists perceive faraway stars to be receding at an apparentlly faster rate, “the farther away these stars are, the faster they are receding.”

Still, any such repulsive force opposite gravity, which may answer for any such perceived acceleration has not been found (said Stephen Hawkings in his Time magazine article on Einstein as “Person of the Century”), implying that the Universe is predisposed to cohere. Many years after Sir Isaac Newton wrote in the form of formulas his observations on the effects of gravitational force, he was said to be wondering aloud: “Whence is it that the Sun and planets gravitate toward one another?”

My own analysis is that those stars that have been moving faster from the time of the “Big Bang” would therefore logically have receded farther, and the observation that “the farther away these stars are, the faster they are receding” does not prove acceleration in the rate of expansion of the Universe after the “Big Bang.” This is a reinterpretation of a specific “Red-Shift” observation, which in many pieces of literature is used to imply accelerating and therefore infinite expansion of the Universe. We can still uphold that cohesion is apparently the most basic force.

How is the entire complex system energized? Aside from the momentum created by the hypothetical “Big Bang,” there are the thermonuclear reactors that give off light and heat, much like our own star, Sol, does for us and the rest of the Solar System.

Toward the middle of the last century, human scientists were able to split the atom, create the nuclear bomb and construct nuclear reactors using atomic fission. Is all that energy coming from division, which is the opposite of synergism? No. Drunvalo Melchizedek, in his The Secret of the Flower of Life, asserts that “all known suns in the Universe are fusion-type nuclear reactors,” implying the primacy of unification, rather than fission, in natural generation of energy. Our own sun fuses pairs of hydrogen atoms to create helium atoms and release energy all around. It is a fusion-type nuclear reactor like all the others, if we are to believe Melchizedek.

About a quarter of a century ago, Arthur Koestler coined the word “holon” to mean anything that is a whole composed of parts while it is itself a part joining other parts in making up a bigger whole. In his Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber supports Koestler’s assertion that everything is a holon, and that the hierarchy of holons (which both Koestler and Wilber call “holarchy”) goes infinitely down and infinitely up.

In the succeeding chapter I seek to explain the essence of holarchy in terms of the operation of synergism, and conclude that because all of the Universe are holons, the synergism principle is at work throughout.

EVERY whole is but a part of a bigger whole. And every part is a whole made up of smaller parts. That is apparently the design of the universe. Earth is our whole planet – including our oceans and landmasses, core, mantle, mountains and atmosphere. But Earth is but a part of the whole Solar System, which is, in turn, a minor part of the Milky Way Galaxy, even as molecules are made up of atoms that are made up of electrons and nuclei, the latter being made up of subnuclear particles like protons, positrons, neutrinos, etc. etc.

Each unit is a synergy of smaller units; and every component of synergy has the “innergy” of its own complementarily interacting and therefore dynamically united – in other words, synergized – component parts. Arthur Koestler coined a word to describe something that is both a whole and a part, a whole of smaller component parts and while being a part of a bigger whole. The first syllable of the word “holon” pertains to its being a whole, and the second syllable pertains to its being a part (from the “–on” ending of the words “electron,” “proton,” “neutron” and “positron”). Then Koestler, and later Ken Wilber, explained that everything is a holon.

In my own version of this thought I would say that everything is a synergy of other things making up its “innergy,” and it dynamically interacts with still other things in a bigger synergy. And whenever I bring in the principle of synergism, it shows that a whole is not just the sum total of its individual parts because it includes the quality and quantity (degree) of the interrelationships among these parts. Used appropriately, where the interrelationships are of the harmonious and complementary kind, synergism promises a value-added to the total output, as in the eyebrow-raising equation “one plus one equals three.”

What’s the difference between a house and a home? One is a container and the other is the contained synergy. Without the bonds of love and interactions of warm cohabitation, you have a house being used as a hotel with rooms occupied by virtual hermits. If we have neighborhood, there are some households interacting. If they are not interacting, you have no neighborhood. If you move all of the households away except one, that one household cannot be called a part of any neighborhood. If spouses decide to separate, you cannot call either one of them “half a couple.” If they had earlier bought a car as part of their conjugal properties, divorce will not make them drive separate half-cars! There are things, like bread, cakes and pies, that can easily be sliced and you just get smaller pieces of bread, cake or pie. Many other things have to have their synergized components together or they don’t exist at all as such things. If we stop all this talk about dividing, we can shift to the processes of joining together. That is the whole point of the phenomenon we call creation.

Wilber speaks of creation in the emergence of new holons from the coming together, the communion, of pre-existing holons. And I add that these pre-existing holons are each a synergy at its own level of existence, but once they come together in a new arrangement, they create a new reality which is higher in magnitude than the original holons, thus exalting them – exalting their collectivity and even exalting each of them individually through transcendence of their earlier limited reality -- but the new holon is totally dependent on the original holons for its very existence as such.

It is a hierarchy in a sense but not in the usual sense we use the word hierarchy. Top bricks in a pyramid are higher than the bottom ones, and these top ones exalt the lower ones by making them part of a structure higher than if there were no top bricks. But while the bottom bricks can lie in peace without any top bricks resting upon them, the top bricks cannot be there where they are if there were no bottom bricks to depend on. And in any pyramid, lower bricks always outnumber the higher ones.

Wilber prefers the word holarchy to hierarchy. While Koestler also uses the term holarchy straight out of his own coined word, he speaks of a part being “sub-ordinated” to the whole (while parts of the same whole are “co-ordinated”), and is therefore consistent to the usual sense of the word hierarchy, as in a hierarchy of ranks.

But Wilber apparently refines the concept of holarchy to be very distinct from hierarchy. He explains that atoms can exist, and have in fact very well existed for a long, long time, without molecules forming among some of them, and that molecules exist can exist and have in fact very well existed for a long time, without substances forming, and substances can exist and have in fact very well existed for a long time, without organisms emerging, and so on and so forth. He speaks of depth of holarchy to refer to the number of qualitative or quantum layers of holons; and he speaks of span as the ratio of the members of holons at one holarchic level to the number of members at the immediately higher holarchic level.

The assertion I dare make here is that the operation of the synergism principle is the decisive factor for the emergence of a new distinct holon to exist at the next higher holarchic level. The synergy achieved from the dynamic togetherness of previously separate original holons. Synergism is the great magnification factor in all the holons from infinitely down to infinitely up throughout the great holarchy we refer to as the Cosmos. From this, I dare say, adding to Koestler and Wilber, that everything is a holon and every holon is a synergy, and that the universe is synergized infinitely-many times over through all the levels of the holarchy!

It is therefore quite impossible for human minds to comprehend fully the sheer magnitude of what I can only just start describing towards the end of the poem Smile for Synergy which I wrote in May 2000. Here are those final lines:

We can only smile after we close our mouths first. They might have opened on their own in gasps of amazement at the overwhelming immensity of the very thought of this “Synergy of ALL synergies,” the glorious reality of which we can only discern to an infinitessimally small extent.

Nobel prize winner Herbert Simon adds the matter of new holons emerging more rapidly. He concludes in his “Parable of the Two Watchmakers” that complex systems evolve from simple systems much more rapidly if there are stable intermediate forms than if there are not.

I seek to add the matter of holon stability. A sand castle is more easily toppled down if right below the full castle form as a holon we immediately have the individual grains of sand. If such grains are somehow grouped first into more or less firm “sand bricks,” then we can have a sturdier sand castle made out of these bricks. This is the principle of the building blocks. Building blocks made up of building blocks that are in turn made up of building blocks, enjoy the operation of synergism at every holarchic level, and the more levels there are, the more stable all these holons become and the more stable the holons they create.

Stronger is the nation that is made up of strong tribes, that are, in turn, made up of strong clans and communities, that are made up of strong neighborhoods that are made up of strong families, than a nation made up directly by individuals with no intermediate-layer groupings. No wonder large organizations see it prudent to build chapters and even clusters of chapters!

(This is not to say that I favor having many administrative layers in organizations, for such administrative layers should not exceed the number of actual holarchic levels for them to fully synergize and orchestrate.)

In every set of elements or of particles, there would be commonalities which would be the bonding element for any synergy to exist and persist. And there would be the diversities which cause dynamic interactions among the elements or particles, the dynamism that makes complementation possible, the dynamism that makes life possible, the dynamism that makes a synergized whole greater in quality and much greater in magnitude than the mere sum of its separate and unsynergized parts.

The quantum leap that occurs when separate parts synergize, a leap that these parts now interacting would make together, and only in togetherness, exalts every single one of these parts that now are elements of a greater whole. The ranking in quality, in such quantum exaltation and value-added magnification, provides basis for synergies to be ranked as in a sort of hierarchy, which both Koestler and Wilber call holarchy. The word “holarchy” is coined and chosen over the word “hierarchy” for a deliberate reason, which I understand as this latter word’s being prone to be misinterpreted as a simple ranking of value. The word hierarchy, as we have gotten accustomed to its usual usage, cannot clearly carry the sense of wholes being dependent on their parts for their very existence. Thus we have representatives of bigger synergies condescending upon smaller ones.

Still, I dare add that the phenomenon of holarchy is dependent on the operation of the principle of synergism. Without synergism, that is the creation of exalted and much greater realities from the coming together of smaller ones, such coming together of the parts will just be equal to the simple sum of the parts.

When Henry A. Virkler, Ph.D., a professor of Psychology in the Palm Beach Atlantic College in Florida, USA, came across the word “non-summativity” intended to mean that the workings of the whole are greater than the sum of its parts, he said “I think the word ‘synergism,’ (i.e., that as two or more people interact they sometimes produce results that none of them would in isolation) is clearer than the word ‘nonsummativity.’”

Wilber does not use the word synergy. But a highly-successful ecological-enterprise leader in West Africa does. Fr. Godfrey Nzamujo of Benin not only mentions the synergism principle, he explains it in the quantum context, as he discusses the empowering shift from the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm to the quantum paradigm. In a visit to the Philippines early in 2003, he presented at the Aquinas Research Complex of the University of Sto. Tomas a paper that explains something like a holarchy of interconnections:

“The solid material objects of classical physics dissolve at the subatomic level into wavelike patterns of probabilities. These patterns, moreover, do not represent probabilities of things but rather probabilities of interconnections. The subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities but can be understood only as interconnection or correlation among various processes of observations and measurements. Subatomic particles are not “things,” but interconnections among things, and those, in turn, are interconnections among other things, and so on. In quantum physics, we do not end up with any “things”; we always deal with interconnections. So here, nature does not show us any isolated building blocks but rather appears as a complex web of interrelationsips among the various parts of unified whole.”

Fr. Nzamujo’s paper presents a contrast between the “mechanistic view of the world” and the “systems view of reality.” The figure presented for the first one has its component particles encircled, with this explanation for the “mechanistic view”: “This view is a collection of objects (which) interact with one another and hence there are relationships among them, but these relationships are secondary.” He explains that it is the lines connecting the particles that should be encircled, instead, and offers this explanation: “In the systems view, we realize that the objects themselves are networks of relationships embedded in larger networks. For the systems thinker, the relationships are primary. The boundaries of the discernible patterns (objects) are secondary.”

“According to the systems view, the essential properties of an organism, or living system, are properties of the whole, which none of the parts have (like sugar, for example). These arise from the interactions and relationships among the parts. CD Broad highlights this point with the term ‘emergent properties’ to indicate these properties that “emerge” at a certain level of complexity but do not exist at lower levels. These properties are destroyed when the system is dissected, either physically or theoretically into isolated elements.

“Although we can discern individual parts in any system, these parts are not isolated and the nature of the whole is always different from the mere sum of the parts. …Synergy! Principle of Synergy!

“What a revolution from the dominant western scientific thinking that ‘In every complex system the behavior of the whole can be understood entirely from the properties of its parts.’ This is the Central Concept in the Cartesian Paradigm, the celebrated Cartesian method of analytic thinking.

“The great shock of the twentieth century was that ‘systems cannot be understood by analysis.’ The properties of the parts are not intrinsic properties but can be understood only within the context of the larger whole.”

It is this innergy, the internal synergy of the parts, their dynamic interrelationships, that accounts for the synergy that, in turn, accounts for the levels in the holarchy. The dynamic interactions would differentiate a whole from a mere set (consisting of systems of subsets of subsets, etc.) that we study in algebra. They turn what is literally a mere collation of people, like the silent persons in an elevator or an inactive crowd, into a screaming mob or a wining team.

Dr. Ibarra “Nim” Gonzalez teaches Semiotics (science of symbols in communication) under the Applied Cosmic Anthropology doctoral program of the Asian Social Institute, after a long stint as chairman of the Communications Department of the Ateneo de Manila University. He describes a hologram to be layer upon layer upon layer of information concentrated by superimposition on a single flat area, where each layer as viewed from a distinct angle shows information on how a three-dimensional object looks from that exact angle of view. Because there is some amount of distance between the two eyes of everyone of us, the two eyes are looking at the flat area from two different angles and are seeing two different layers of the hologram, exactly the way the two eyes triangulate to perceive depth in actual three-dimensional objects, thus producing a simulation of that triangulation and what we see as a convincing illusion as if the object being viewed were indeed three-dimensional.

How holograms are produced is something I won’t venture to explain here. And in the light of Nim’s explanation, I don’t really know if the word hologram should also be used to refer to those three-dimensional images, with television-screen texture, used in many episodes of the Star Wars series.

I view the set of layers of information synergized by superimposition to be a hologram, the way I view a set of still photos synergized by quick-paced strobe-succession to produce the convincing illusion of motion. Viewed on the big screen, the illusory motion really affects my mind (“fools it a bit for some moments”) and heartbeat (many times quickening its pace).

A stereophonic system produces for the mind-ears tandem an illusion as convincing as a hologram produces for the mind-eyes tandem.

While I know each one to be just playing with illusion, that is “fooling my mind a bit,” I know that the fooling is just “a bit” and I can afford to choose to just fully enjoy the experience. I can intellectually understand the illusions employed in “sensurround” movies but I have yet to enjoy the actual experience of one. This makes me look forward to suspending my thinking about the multiple synergies involved and just enjoying that experience.

I bring up here the matter of holograms for another reason. And this is related to the illustration on the cover of this book. I would have preferred to present the three figures of the human (the physical body, the ethereal body called Mind, and the Spirit) as three layers upon one reality, and they should all be in exactly the same spot. But while the “flatten image” command in my PhotoShop program integrates all the distinct layers into one, the unified image shows basically just the first layer and only portions of the second layer that are not covered by the first, and only the portions of the third layer that are not covered by either the first or the second layer.

Only a hologram would allow such superimposition of complete images of all three layers with each layer accessible to the eyes from certain specific angles of viewpoint. I’ve seen a promotional sticker of Star Wars Episode One: Phantom Menace with a hologram superimposing the two images of Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader.

But putting a hologram of whatever size on the cover of this book would make it quite expensive for my publisher to produce and for readers to buy. So we just have to be contented with what I actually came up with for the cover illustration, showing three layers of the Human Holon in a triangular arrangement, with arrows to show motion towards precise superimposition. In Part Two I share my thoughts on the reality behind what I wanted to portray in the cover illustration in the first place.

The highly respected nationalist economist of contemporary Philippines, Dr. Sixto K. Roxas compresses into a few paragraphs Ken Wilber’s application of the holon principle to the evolution of human dynamics. In his unppublished monograph, Sustainable Development and the National Interest: Intra-Country Regions and a Four-Quadrant Eight-Level View of Local Integration (May 18, 2002), “SKR” writes, with all underscoring in the original:

“Briefly, Ken Wilber takes the term coined by Koestler (The Ghost in the Machine) to subsume the universal characteristic of all things as made up of units, each a whole in itself, and a part of larger wholes. Holons have evolved over the millennia from the time of the ‘Big Bang’ along a trajectory tracing their passage toward greater and greater complexity and manifesting ever greater capacities and deeper and wider interconnectedness.

“To trace that passage, the holons have to be viewed under a combination of four aspects: as individuals, and as collectives, and as having external properties and internal structures and functions. The combinations of four aspects describe four quadrants: the individual having two aspects, interior and exterior, and the collectives having their own interior and exterior aspects. The system describes four sets of combinations: an Upper-Right qudrant encompassing the exterior properties of the individual holon and an Upper-Left, the interior properties of the individual. A Lower-Left describes the interior elements of the collective and the Lower-Right the exterior-collective combination.

“Along each quadrant there is an axis marking the stages of development the holon undergoes from its simple origins to the higher degrees of complexity viewed from the quadrant’s perspective. These axes mark out stages that the internal and external functions, properties and structures of the individual and the collective holons have traced as physical particles, chemical elements and compounds, biological cells, organs, plant and animal organisms, into human individuals, societies, clans, tribes, nations, empires, economies, trading networks and so on up the scale. That passage is viewed from four perspectives represented by each of the quadrants: individual external, individual internal, collective internal and collective external.

“When applied to specific communities/organizations in a specific geographical space and along a particular historical time segment, the four perspectives provide an integral view of the development process. For the human societies, at every stage of development, there are physical, physiological, psychological, ideological, values and behavioral, organizational properties and patterns that are relevant to the understanding of the development process and its pathological aberrations.”

Dr. Roxas proceeds after these paragraphs to explain what he calls “Spiral Dynamics.” Readers interested to see Wilber’s full text, with graphic presentations, may read his second edition of A Brief History of Everything (2000), pp. 63-75.

Let me add my own recent thoughts about the operation of the synergism principle. I have come to believe in Oneness and Love as, in the words of Walsch, “all there is.” If indeed the cosmos is one seamless reality, oneness of all is the reality that does not have to be changed as we move everyone and everything to unite. All disconnections are in the mind, and the efforts for unity are all efforts to reawaken awareness to that constant reality, something like humans do not have to “go to the heaven” of blissful oneness but we just have to “wake up in it.”

The explanation and appreciation of the synergism principle may, therefore, be better if we note well that there is really no new value-added energy created from the coming together, just a new value-added energy realized, remembered, rediscovered.

So if we are to start from the seamless reality as the premise, we can see that the Oneness of All is of unimaginable power worthy of the full sense of the term “almighty.” Further, we see that all alienation and separation from the Oneness of All, the Great Whole, the Great Synergy of All Synergies and from one another drastically weakens us.

To use an analogy that is puny compared to the magnitudes we deal with in the previous paragraph, it’s something like plucking out John Lennon from the Beatles. We couldn’t have John Lennon himself anymore the way we had him before. And the Beatles as such could never be the same ever again.

To use another example much closer to my own experience, it’s something like what happened when my column-writing partner was sick and there was even a gap between us. When I was writing the column item that had to be submitted on deadline time, but had to do it all alone in that situation, I felt so weak and found it hard to produce enough sentences to make up even just half of what I had earlier felt “too limiting” as the maximum prescribed length for our joint-column submissions.

I was that time not half a two-member “super team”; that time there was no team at all to speak of. Before we teamed up I was already a prolific and even overly-self-confident writer. Was I in effect disempowered by the team-up into overdependence on it? I could not accept that, “No way!” And I proceded to produce what I could consider as a “good-enough” submission. But having experienced the enhancement of capability brought forth by the team-up, I had raised my standard of what to call a good output, including the enjoyment of the process of shaping it.

No, I had not been disempowered by years of synergy experience into overdependence on the team-up. I was given a reward, actually we were both rewarded, for teaming up. I think it was a clue of some sort saying we have been on the right track in re-membering and enjoyably experiencing a glimpse of the Oneness of All. I still have to get her view on this, though. But just to share a bit of a happy ending to that story, I want to assure you that the gap did not last very long, and our team emerged into existence anew.

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