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The Camp Cross Croutons Essay example

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The Camp Cross Croutons The Camp Cross Croutons is the name of the first community I felt I truly belonged to and that belonged to me. In this paper I will be reflecting on this significant culture I was part of, and then viewing it as a system, through the lens of “new science”. I will explore the sometimes paradoxical notions of emergence, autopoiesis, Maturana’s
“biology of cognition”, structural coupling, chaos and dissipative structures.

Camp Cross, and the Croutons From the time I was three, Camp Cross was a familiar summer getaway for me.

An old weathered group of cabins and meeting halls on Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho,

it was a great place to run, swim, canoe and be a kid. As my …show more content…

Autopoietic systems are closed structurally, but open to their environment. All parts of the system work together to create or re-create themselves by changing or replacing their components(Capra 2002). “Autopoiesis is life’s fundamental process for creating and renewing itself, for growth and change. (Wheatley 2006). While autopoiesis was initially observed and developed at the level of microbiology, it can apply to any living organism, including people and groups. The paradox of an autopoietic system is that while it creates itself in order to preserve itself it will also change in whatever ways are necessary in order to insure further self-generation.
(Wheatley 2006).

I see the Croutons as both a group of self-generating organisms and as a self-

generating organism as a whole. I am quite certain I created aspects of myself through

my interactions with the Croutons. It is not that I didn’t exist before the time I spent

there, but I do think there were ways I had not acknowledged or appreciated myself

and that I created a stronger, more present way of being with the new patterns of behavior

I experienced. Additionally, I became less concerned with belonging at school or at

home because of the feeling of belonging my membership in the Croutons gave me.

The organism that was the Croutons started with a dozen of us in 1969.

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