restarting

ne	restarting go back to zero and rebuild from scratch

negative thinking > achieving negative goals > restarting

Renewal implies continuity with the past, and a continual striving for freshness.
Repeating implies going back and trying something again, within the same domain.
Restarting implies discontinuity with the past, and a singular jump to a better state.
Return implies restoring continuity with the past.

Back to basics. Begin at the beginning. A fresh start, and we won’t make the same mistakes again, knowing what we know now. Allow the old to decay, and the new to replace it.

Death and rebirth can be discussed at various levels: the cell, the individual person or animal, the organization, the species. At all these levels, death is necessary for rebirth, growth, learning.

Forgetting is paradoxical. Once something exists, it cannot be ‘reunexisted’. Although we know that humans existed before spoken language, and that each of us was once unable to speak or comprehend our mother tongue, we cannot imagine human life without language.
‘The moving finger writes and having writ moves on, nor all thy piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it’.

Restarting is often only a fantasy solution. Furthermore, it conflicts with recollection, which can also be a precondition for learning.

And restarting becomes a fatal, inescapable loop. Modern society breeds people who cannot improve their existing relationships, and who are forced to switch partners in an unending series. Modern organizations and cities are full of transient people, who are halfway towards their next restart. This is not true restarting but repeating.

Death and
Suicide negative thinking > examples > death

Design for
Green Fields The French architect Jean Nouvel adopts a paradoxically modest iconoclasm: "We have to start from zero again, but the material is there, and that is what we are going to develop with more modesty, but more ambition to achieve depth. … I return to zero every time."
Architects and planners sometimes fantasize about designing for green fields. "What could we not build, if we were not constrained by what is already there!" New cities such as Milton Keynes or Austin Texas have a different character to old cities such as Liverpool or Chicago, because they were designed on green fields.

New Forms "A new form, unconsciously judged in terms of the time-honoured, established forms, will always appear to be more or less an absence of form. ... The inarticulate new-born babe will always be thought a monster, even by people who are enthusiastic about experiment." [Alain Robbe-Grillet, Towards a New Novel]
Robbe-Grillet cites Schoenberg, incorrectly described in a work of reference as "showing complete disregard for rules".

Disintegrating Melanie Klein’s view of change involved conserving and repairing: reintegrating that which has been divided or fragmented. Wilfred Bion, while agreeing with this, also identified the need for the reverse transition: breaking up established patterns of knowledge, breaking the mould of familiarity, introducing chaos. In psychological terms, this is a transition from the "depressive" position to the "paranoid-schizoid" position.

Forgetting Performing animals can be trained to do various tricks, to entertain the paying public. Dolphins are probably the most intelligent and quick-learning of performing animals (not necessarily excluding humans), and part of the performance is usually the learning process itself. A human ‘trainer’ demonstrates to the audience how the dolphin learns a new trick.
At first, the dolphin attempts to repeat tricks already learned, and gets quite distressed when these are not rewarded. Suddenly, and with great excitement, the dolphin understands what is required, and produces a constant series of new tricks, which the ‘trainer’ can then pretend to teach it. The dolphin has learned how to forget!
Of course, this is not real forgetting. But what is real forgetting? Hypnotists claim to be able to retrieve ‘lost’ memories from the depths of the unconscious. But some also claim to be able to create false memories, which appear identical to real lost memories.
Deliberate forgetting is a paradoxical task. The harder we try to forget, the stronger the memory.
In serial monogamy, our new partners would like us to forget previous partners.

Serial
monogamy One way of improving your love life is to start again with a new partner. This is often expected to be easier than starting again with your existing partner. A middle-aged man may even start a new family with a younger wife, rather than rebuild his relationship with his existing children.
This is a model for all sorts of social arrangements. People change jobs in order to escape from the baggage of associations, obligations, expectations and misunderstandings that they have accumulated in their current job. People migrate to new towns, new countries, in the hope of a new life.

Revolution If repair is conservative, restarting is revolutionary. The true revolution redefines everything.
The false revolution - and history shows many of these - merely replaces one elite with another.

Undoing
progress Can we put the technological clock back? There is at least one example of this: the Japanese abandonment of guns (see Perrin).

New towns

New
organizations

End of an
organization There are three ways for an organization to terminate. One is to withdraw from its areas of operation, allowing other organizations to take over its markets or functions. It is very rare for an organization to wind itself up altogether, even if its raison d’etre disappear. (Somebody once told me that the company that was formed with the sole purpose of organizing the Great Exhibition of 1888 still exists, employing a small staff in perpetuity from the profits, but I have never been able to corroborate this.) Usually a company withdraws from one market or business area, in order to concentrate its resources somewhere else. This is known as retrenchment. Thus, for example, a supermarket chain may decide to stop selling clothes to concentrate on food, and may close some stores. Organizations may be wound up by governmental action: thus the Thatcher government decided to disband the elected Greater London Council, distributing some of its functions between small local bodies and allocating others to unelected central bodies. Sometimes, however, government attempts to wind up organizations merely serves to drive banned organizations underground. (Civil servants maintain informal networks, allowing them to act as if the ministries still exist that they used to work for.)
The second way for an organization to terminate is for it to be gobbled up by another organization. It may of course take some time for the organization to get digested.
British Airways still maintains a cultural distinction between two organizations that merged in the 1960s: BOAC, the long-haul carrier now based at Heathrow Terminal Four; and BEA, the European carrier now based at Heathrow Terminal One. The third way for an organization to terminate is for it to burst, fragment, come apart. This may be the result of bankruptcy or civil war. The pieces may then die, survive as independent organizations, or get gobbled up. Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. But there are also planned divisions of organizations into separate parts: the separation of British Telecom from the Post Office, for example, or the establishment in many countries of an Air Force separate from the two older services.

Reincarnation We start by thinking how horrid it is to grow old and die, how pleasant it would be to have a new young body, a new life. Reincarnation is an attractive prospect for many people; it is a serious belief of millions. The spiritual quest is to reincarnate well: the better one lives, the better life one gets next time around.
And yet when reincarnation is thought of as an unending cycle of restarting, the attractions are mixed with unease. For many millions more, the spiritual quest is not to reincarnate well, but to escape reincarnation. Reincarnation becomes not a solution to old age and death, but a yet bigger problem.

Rebirth "Born again" Christians

Page last updated on February 18th, 2001
Copyright © 2000, 2001 Richard Veryard

Death and Suicide	negative thinking > examples > death
Design for Green Fields	The French architect Jean Nouvel adopts a paradoxically modest iconoclasm: "We have to start from zero again, but the material is there, and that is what we are going to develop with more modesty, but more ambition to achieve depth. … I return to zero every time." Architects and planners sometimes fantasize about designing for green fields. "What could we not build, if we were not constrained by what is already there!" New cities such as Milton Keynes or Austin Texas have a different character to old cities such as Liverpool or Chicago, because they were designed on green fields.
New Forms	"A new form, unconsciously judged in terms of the time-honoured, established forms, will always appear to be more or less an absence of form. ... The inarticulate new-born babe will always be thought a monster, even by people who are enthusiastic about experiment." [Alain Robbe-Grillet, Towards a New Novel] Robbe-Grillet cites Schoenberg, incorrectly described in a work of reference as "showing complete disregard for rules".
Disintegrating	Melanie Klein’s view of change involved conserving and repairing: reintegrating that which has been divided or fragmented. Wilfred Bion, while agreeing with this, also identified the need for the reverse transition: breaking up established patterns of knowledge, breaking the mould of familiarity, introducing chaos. In psychological terms, this is a transition from the "depressive" position to the "paranoid-schizoid" position.
Forgetting	Performing animals can be trained to do various tricks, to entertain the paying public. Dolphins are probably the most intelligent and quick-learning of performing animals (not necessarily excluding humans), and part of the performance is usually the learning process itself. A human ‘trainer’ demonstrates to the audience how the dolphin learns a new trick. At first, the dolphin attempts to repeat tricks already learned, and gets quite distressed when these are not rewarded. Suddenly, and with great excitement, the dolphin understands what is required, and produces a constant series of new tricks, which the ‘trainer’ can then pretend to teach it. The dolphin has learned how to forget! Of course, this is not real forgetting. But what is real forgetting? Hypnotists claim to be able to retrieve ‘lost’ memories from the depths of the unconscious. But some also claim to be able to create false memories, which appear identical to real lost memories. Deliberate forgetting is a paradoxical task. The harder we try to forget, the stronger the memory. In serial monogamy, our new partners would like us to forget previous partners.
Serial monogamy	One way of improving your love life is to start again with a new partner. This is often expected to be easier than starting again with your existing partner. A middle-aged man may even start a new family with a younger wife, rather than rebuild his relationship with his existing children. This is a model for all sorts of social arrangements. People change jobs in order to escape from the baggage of associations, obligations, expectations and misunderstandings that they have accumulated in their current job. People migrate to new towns, new countries, in the hope of a new life.
Revolution	If repair is conservative, restarting is revolutionary. The true revolution redefines everything. The false revolution - and history shows many of these - merely replaces one elite with another.
Undoing progress	Can we put the technological clock back? There is at least one example of this: the Japanese abandonment of guns (see Perrin).
New towns
New organizations
End of an organization	There are three ways for an organization to terminate. One is to withdraw from its areas of operation, allowing other organizations to take over its markets or functions. It is very rare for an organization to wind itself up altogether, even if its raison d’etre disappear. (Somebody once told me that the company that was formed with the sole purpose of organizing the Great Exhibition of 1888 still exists, employing a small staff in perpetuity from the profits, but I have never been able to corroborate this.) Usually a company withdraws from one market or business area, in order to concentrate its resources somewhere else. This is known as retrenchment. Thus, for example, a supermarket chain may decide to stop selling clothes to concentrate on food, and may close some stores. Organizations may be wound up by governmental action: thus the Thatcher government decided to disband the elected Greater London Council, distributing some of its functions between small local bodies and allocating others to unelected central bodies. Sometimes, however, government attempts to wind up organizations merely serves to drive banned organizations underground. (Civil servants maintain informal networks, allowing them to act as if the ministries still exist that they used to work for.) The second way for an organization to terminate is for it to be gobbled up by another organization. It may of course take some time for the organization to get digested. British Airways still maintains a cultural distinction between two organizations that merged in the 1960s: BOAC, the long-haul carrier now based at Heathrow Terminal Four; and BEA, the European carrier now based at Heathrow Terminal One. The third way for an organization to terminate is for it to burst, fragment, come apart. This may be the result of bankruptcy or civil war. The pieces may then die, survive as independent organizations, or get gobbled up. Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. But there are also planned divisions of organizations into separate parts: the separation of British Telecom from the Post Office, for example, or the establishment in many countries of an Air Force separate from the two older services.
Reincarnation	We start by thinking how horrid it is to grow old and die, how pleasant it would be to have a new young body, a new life. Reincarnation is an attractive prospect for many people; it is a serious belief of millions. The spiritual quest is to reincarnate well: the better one lives, the better life one gets next time around. And yet when reincarnation is thought of as an unending cycle of restarting, the attractions are mixed with unease. For many millions more, the spiritual quest is not to reincarnate well, but to escape reincarnation. Reincarnation becomes not a solution to old age and death, but a yet bigger problem.
Rebirth	"Born again" Christians