How ultimately do we assign value to loss of hope or loss of dignity? What payment is due for physical abuse or even death? The answer(s) to these difficult questions reside(s) in the assignment of meaning and value to specific environmental conditions both past and present. This meaning and value will shift from moment to moment and from one constituency to another constituency. Nothing restores the homeostasis of a discriminatory society—especially if this homeostasis involves returning to a previous mode of repression. The environment must (and will) continually shift. Anticipations will change repeatedly as potential solutions are proposed. Meaning will be reconstructed multiple times as each constituency seeks to understand and perhaps appreciate the perspectives offered by other constituencies. Different values will emerge and gain ascendance as different constituencies are brought to the table. Baselines are constantly shifting. Predictions are frequently modified. Potential actions are proposed and abandoned with the shifts in baselines and predictions. Polystasis will prevail.
Before leaving this focus on Polystasis, I wish to reiterate that this quick moving process often comes at a cost. As I mentioned when introducing Polystasis, the quick engagement of appraisal, adjustment and action is not amendable to either slow thinking or reflective practice. Polystasis is more often aligned with the noncritical, knee-jerk reactions about which Don Schön cautions us (Schön, 1983). Schön is likely to bring in his own teaching of urban planning courses at M.I.T. He would undoubtedly suggest that planning in this domain will inevitably require Polystatic processes. As in the case of reparations, urban planning inevitably involves changing baselines, altered predictions and complex action plans—for an urban landscape is inevitably rugged and dancing.
Daniel Kahneman (2011) would similarly caution us about engagement in fast thinking when operating in a dynamic polystatic manner. He is likely to suggest that Polystasis is vulnerable to the inappropriate uses of heuristics when we are shifting or changing our baseline and making our predictions about conditions in a dynamic environment. We might, for instance, apply a recency heuristic. We make the same adjustment that we did the last time we faced this shift in our environment. We put on a sweater the last time we felt a chill. We took a specific action the last time we lost an indispensable worker (our accountant). We can take this same action regarding our absent craftsman. Furthermore, polystatic adjustments can becomes habitual. We always put on a sweater at this time of day (imagining that the temperature in our room will change). We indiscriminately apply the same employment policy regardless of the employee being considered.
Given this potential vulnerability, we must ask: how do we adjust to a new or changing base line? The process of adjustment will operate differently when we are facing an Essential challenge and when motivations (and anxiety) are high. We are likely to think very fast and be especially noncritical when the stakes are high. Emotions are intense. Furthermore, we might always image a threat when we are tired or distracted—we indeed become “trigger-happy.” Anxiety becomes a common experience. Retreat and isolation become a common polystatic action. Kahneman’s fast-thinking heuristic might even be the easy labeling of people with different skin tone—especially those who come from a different social-economic level or different culture. We immediately view these people as different. They become the “Other” (Oshry, 2018; Weitz and Bergquist, 2024) Our proximal environment becomes threatening when we encounter a person with darker skin or someone speaking with an accent. We rapidly and uncritically predict trouble. We imagine a dark-skinned lion or lion from another continent. Our baseline changes as we shift into a survival mode. We take action to avoid this person.
