HipBone Analysis:

This is an overview of the HipBone analytic tools and the analytic process they facilitate, which we can loosely term beadgaming.  

*  

The HipBone analytic approach applies the kind of thinking proposed by the HipBone Games to the exploration and explanation of complicated problems.  

I say "complicated problems" because the word "complex" now has a technical meaning when applied to "problems" -- I want to talk about "complex problems" in that sense, but to focus on an approach to them which highlights qualitative, cultural understanding rather than quantifiable mathematical manipulation.  

Given my personal interest in monitoring and analyzing religious violence, most of my examples will be drawn from that area.  

*  

I'll briefly explain the concept, then present an extended example in which I examine religious and strategic issues connecting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Saudi Sheikh al-Hawali and his apocalyptic treatise The Day of Wrath, Osama bin Laden -- who considers the Sheikh a hero -- and the impact of strategic tempo on asymmetric warfare.

The basics:

Diagrammatic reasoning is the only really fertile reasoning.
-- C.S. Peirce

I have been working for some time on a new analytic process for understanding complex problems, with application to conflict resolution and special interest in the conflict in the Middle East. This work has been undertaken in association with Boston University's center for Millennial Studies and Howard Rheingold's Brainstorms.  

Analytically, this work extends some ideas of Stephen Toulmin in his Uses of Argument (1958), by mapping the varying perspectives within a conflict in such a way that participants can "walk around" the conflict as a whole, as generals used to walk around a model battlefield to discuss strategy. This analytic approach thus portrays the complexity of the situation dynamically, in what is effectively a humanistic and qualitative equivalent to STELLA-type quantitative modeling.  

The central analytic approach used here is the recognition of symmetries - homologies, parallelisms, and oppositions between positions. This has long been the natural, almost instinctive way in which humans have evaluated "fairness" - in HipBone analysis, this natural analytic process a rigorous method, with surprisingly impactful results.

The boards:

The boards used in a HipBone analytic process are free-form boards, built as the work itself proceeds.

*  

in general, boards will consist of aggregates of HipBone "move" positions with lines / links connecting them

the boards may be presented as illustrations within text documents and in online presentations, as in this Caucus web-presentation

they may also be used in "walkaround" form on a tabletop

"experimental" configurations such as boards within boards, multilevel boards, quipu-based boards, boards in which information is aligned with the topology of a map, etc, are also envisioned:   or

*

There are any number of nuanced ways in which the boards can protray different kinds of linkage -- causal, probabilistic, time-sequenced, stakeholder-driven, etc -- and one of the eventual (quixotic) goals of the project is the assembly of a taxonomy of linkages and a common vocabulary for representing them in diagrams which may merge or superimpose, say, STELLA diagrams, PERT charts, Markov diagrams, network analyses, with "regular" HipBone analytic materials.

Evaluation by symmetry:

Once again, what we're doing here is working with an existing human habit of mind -- in this case, evaluation by juxtaposition, aka comparison, aka balance, aka fair play -- and turning it into a rule, indeed an algorithm, so that it can be employed rigorously to a problem.  

*  

It's worth noting that a wide range of human emotions and behaviors can be structured around the sense of symmetry:

vengeance

an eye for an eye

tit for tat

the punishment fitting the crime

fair play

quality under the law

and so on.  Only berserker rampage, on the one hand, and forgiveness, on the other, appear to function entirely without regard to balance.  

It's also worth noting that the recognition of one symmetry during a process symmetrical analysis frequently leaves a "residue" of asymmetry -- which in fact leaps to mind as soon as the original symmetry has been recognized -- and that the iterative process then moves to the analysis of this residue by means of the search for a symmetrical analogy... so that the process might more appropriately be called evaluation by symmetries and asymmetries.  

It is worth noting that the use of this procedure in no way presumes that two sides in an analysis have equal moral standing, any more than it presumes that they have equal military might or any other property.  

It is also true, however, that if used in negotiation and conflict resolution, the procedure would allow all parties to have a voice, and propose their own perceived balances and imbalances, symmetries and asymmteries, in a way that may lead to empathic recognition of similarities and consequent mutual understanding.

Examples of symmetry in natural analysis:

What I'm aiming for here is to present some fragments that illustrate our natural tendency to use symmetrical analysis in evaluating complex situations, in a way that persuasively illustrates the centrality of parallelism in conflict in general, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular, and in methodologies for its possible resolution...

Symmetry at the root:  

Stephen O'Leary a couple of days ago pointed me to Protagoras, and his saying (as recorded by Diogenes Laertius): there are two sides to every question, exactly opposite to each other.  The senses in which that observation is both profoundly true and very misleading hold between them, I believe, a family of important keys with which to unlock conflict.  

Symmetry as political measure:  

The hint I have to begin with is that justice and fairness seem to be implicated in most acts of vengeance, and that justice and fairness can also be appealed to in the negotiation of resolutions to conflicts: which in turn makes me strongly suspect justice and fairness are key concerns, and furthermore that they boil down to symmetries and asymmetries.  At which point I recall Ehud Barak making a remark about the Israeli / Palestinian situation which alluded to those concepts...

What we have here is a force-driven collision between the wills of two national movements, one of which is already seeking normality while the other is still looking for initial expressions of proud nationality and independence. And within that clash of forces, there is an asymmetry in readiness to make sacrifices and asymmetry in readiness to pay the price.  

Israeli PM Ehud Barak, quoted in HaAretz, "Barak and Sharon: Between two worlds", February 2, 2001

My guess is that the articulation of perceived symmetries and asymmetries is the most profound single step that can be taken under these circumstances (i.e. granting the absence of a great deal of Gandhian sentiment), and that an analytic process can then perhaps begin to sort out those items which occur, as it were, "on both sides of the equation" -- and set them aside while beginning work on the residue.  

Symmetry in strategic thinking:  

The capabilities of the two sides, though totally asymmetric, were almost perfectly counterbalanced  

General Wesley K. Clark (ret.), in Time, October 23 2000, p. 40.

And ain't that comment in itself a profound example of the symmetry of paradox??  

Symmetry in rhetorical analysis:  

The kind of analysis-by-symmetries that I'm attempting to build into an entire, intricate system here cropped up the other day in a comment by the independent sociologist of religion, Dr Thomas Robbins, on the New Religious Movements mailing list.  Dr Robbins wrote:

Many views treat terrorist suicide bombings as short run tactical measures arrived at in the heat of battle out of "desperation," frustration or grim necessity. In contrast Sharon's military actions are not seen as primarily tactical, impulsive, adventitious or involuntary, but rather they are seen to embody a carefully planned, long-term strategic policy to re-occupy the West Bank, preclude a Palestinian state and undo the Oslo arrangements he always opposed.  

Of course, there are mirror opposite rhetorical structures in which Sharon's actions are seen as short-term tactical accommodations to horrific Palestinian violence, grim necessity, frustration, confusion, etc; whereas Palestinian suicide bombing represents a carefully calculated, long-term, strategic plan to destroy Israel.  So in each rhetorical system one side's violence is seen as tactical and sort of adventitious or even involuntary while the other side is pursuing violence as a deliberate long run strategy.  I think planned "strategical" interpretations of each side's actions, i.e., somewhat demonological interpretations have an element of plausibility.  But it seems arbitrary and biased (and at an extreme "totalistic") to treat one side's violence as tactical and adventitious (or sadly necessary) while declaring the other side's violence as a carefully planned long run strategy of destruction.  It is the double standard that irks me not the mere attribution to a particular party o long-range, somewhat conspiratorial strategy.  Both sides may have dark "strategical" plans.  

In any case the rhetorical structure of so many partisan essays is to attribute strategic violence to one (disfavored) side and adventitious, impulsive or absolutely necessary tactical violence to the favored side which one sympathizes with.  

Source: NRM 1312, Wed 3 April 2002.

Quoted with permission.  Tom Robbins is co-editor with Susan Palmer of Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: contemporary apocalyptic movements, 1997.  

Symmetry in claims:  

Both sides seem to be claiming that the other has finally done it, and although the two ways in which this proposition are phrased in the two quotes I am offering here may differ, it looks as though Seder Night and Jenin (respectively) will be two major symbolic markers of the utter depravity of the other side for a while...  

I've picked out the particular phrases that I see as spectacular statements of this parallelism-in-opposition here:

The Real War of Independence
Hirsh Goodman
http://www.jrep.com/Columnists/Article-104.html  

Seder night 2002 will be remembered as Israel's Kristallnacht

And:

The Wild Beast that Zionism Created: Self-Destruction
Al-Hayat (London), April 4, 2002
Prof. Halim Barakat, Georgetown University  

And in all pride, I say that Jenin is the city of the Arab future.

Symmetry in nomenclature of terror:  

The truism that one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter (which sets teeth on edge in some circles and heads nodding in others) has a corollary: one person's counterterrorist is another's ethnic cleanser.  

--Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda, eds., The Age of Terror: America and the World after September 11, Basic Books and Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, 2001, Introduction, p. xv.

In British / American terms, think of the Swamp Fox...  

Symmetry in "worsts":  

A nicely observed symmetry here, in Mark Juergensmeyer's Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, p 179:

Osama bin Ladin, implicated in the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, explained in an interview a year before the bombing that America deserved to be targetted because it was "the biggest terrorist in the world." It may be only coincidence that after the embassy bombings U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel Berger called Osama "the most dangerous nonstate terrorist in the world."

Symmetry in possible resolution mechanisms:  

Prof. Leonard Marcus, who runs a conflict resolution center at Harvard with a Jordanian colleague, recently suggested on NPR's Morning Edition that the leaders of Israel and Palestine should each give an identical speech at the same time, each claiming responsibility and calling on the other to move forward.

*  

It is my contention that this natural affinity for evaluation by symmetry is the deepest tool for evaluation of complex situations that we possess, and that its rigorous implementation will produce breakthroughs in both conflict analysis and conflict resolution.

Sample of HipBone Analysis analysis:

I'd like to show you a brief sample of how HipBone analysis works in practice, using large "beads" to illustrate the kinds of quotations that I search for as I'm monitoring the relevant literature, because they add pith and power to the overall impact. I'll do this in two parts which I'll present in the following posts...  

To begin with, I would like to link some beads which have to do with aymmetric warfare: let's call the first one Jalut (Goliath) in the Quran -- Jalut being the Arabic spelling of Goliath.

That's my first bead, and it sets me up with the Quranic version of the David and Goliath story -- preparing us for the many intrinsic connections between the three Abrahamic religions which are central to the problem area we'll be exploring.  

Let's call the second bead Goliath according to RAND:

Here we've moved from mythic time into contemporary time, and from an Islamic perspective to that of the USA, and also opened the topic of asymmetric warfare -- an extremely significant topic in the analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but also our relations with Iraq, al-Qaida, and insurgencies and terrorism...  

... and link that in turn with a bead we'll call domination by unbelievers:

The first link, threaded by the notion of Goliath, shows the mythologic underpinning as viewed (a) through Islamic eyes as scripture (from which the world may be diagnosed), and (b) as viewed through RAND corporation eyes as a humanistic metaphor for asymmetryic warfare (which is kinda the same thing, but with a greatly reduced sense of the authority of the sacred).  

The second link connects the RAND notion of asymmetric warfare with Islamic perspective, in which there should be an asymmetry between unbelievers and believers -- with believers in the superior position.  The present situation is the reverse of this, which is why it seems paradoxical to the jihadists, and hence why they feel so impelled to fight us.  

This paradox, finally, gives me my link to Nigel Howard's bead, how strong can defeat weak:

This bead describes the paradoxical difficulty of winning an asymmetric war when you ostensibly have the more powerful forces.

Analysis, cont'd:

Analysis, cont'd:

In this part of our analysis, I'll familiarize you with some of the intricate details that surround the current conflict over Jerusalem, and make you privy to one piece of intelligence about Osama bin Laden that has been largely overlooked by all but a few scholars, and which has important possible implications for the War on Terrorism.  

Here's an image of the area known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount, and to the Islamic world as the Noble Sanctuary or Al-Aqsa:  

 

This Jerusalem landmark is at the very heart of the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and according to Osama bin Laden, of Al-Qaaida's jihad against the crusaders too.  

The Jerusalem Reporter journalist Gershom Gorenberg has written a fine book called The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount.  In it, he details the ways in which those members of all three "religions of the book" who are particularly concerned and excited by the idea of the end of days, the coming of a wise one (Moshiach, Christ, the Mahdi) tend to view the Temple Mount / Noble Sanctuary as the place where it will all happen - and in particular, how some Jews and some Christians believe that the Third Temple must be built on that site, and Muslims that the Al-Aqsa mosque must remain there, for their respective prophecies to be fulfilled.  

Several attempts have been made over the last twenty years to demolish or ritually defile the Noble Sanctuary, and the particular "piece" of analysis I'm offering here compares one Jewish and one Islamic position regarding this aspect of the conflict.  

The gist of the parallelism:  

To give you an idea of how close the parallelisms between the two extreme positions, Jewish and Islamic, in fact are, I offer these two paragraphs -- a basic compare and contrast formulation of the apocalyptic tug-of-war about the Temple Mount / Noble Sanctuary as I see it:

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the site on which Solomon's Temple was built, and the holiest place where HaShem desires to be worshipped by his beloved children, the Jewish people, according the definitive scripture, the Tanach, which He wrote: the Al-Aqsa Mosque should therefore be removed and the Third Temple built on this site, so that ha-Moshiach can come.

The Noble Sanctuary in Al-Quds is the site on which Suleiman's Temple was built, and one of the holiest places where Allah desires to be worshipped by his beloved children, the Ummah of Islam, according to the definitive scripture, the Qur'an, which He revealed through his messenger Gabriel: the Al-Aqsa Mosque is therefore itself the Third Temple, and should not be removed from this site, so that al-Mahdi can come.

Please note that these two points of view are intended to represent the positions, respectively, of extreme Messianic and Mahdist elements within the Israeli and Palestinian camps, ie those who are (as Richard Landes of the Center for Millennial Studies would say) "semiotically aroused" by their soon expectations of Moshiach or Mahdi.

Analysis, cont'd:

I'd eventually like to connect Jewish and Islamic references to the abomination of desolation in this move -- it's a prophetic theme which also plays a role in Christian "end times" scenarios.  

Here I'll provide some immediate background.  

The abomination of desolation is described thus in Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology:

An expression that occurs three times in the Septuagint of Daniel (9:27; 11:31; 12:11) and twice in the words of Jesus (Matt 24:15; Mark 13:14), where slight linguistic variation exists. Luke's account of this prophecy (21:20) is more general and speaks of armies surrounding Jerusalem. First Maccabees, quoting Daniel, refers these words to the sacrifice of swine's flesh on the altar in Jerusalem by Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, in 168 b.c. (1:54). Josephus, without referring to Daniel, recounts this episode in detail (Antiq. 7.5.4). Jesus, in using these cryptic words of Daniel, is also predicting a desecration of the temple, or at lest the temple area, which will parallel the catastrophic event of the past, so well remembered by the Jews of his day.

More recently, Hal Lindsey's apocalyptic best-seller The Late, Great Planet Earth presents a popular current understanding of the term in Evangelical Christian "end times" circles, arguing:

first, there will be a reinstitution of Jewish worship according to the law of Moses with sacrifices and oblations in the general times of Christ's return;m secondly, there is to be a desecration of the Jewish Temple in the time immediately preceding Christ's retutn. We must conclude that a third Temple will be rebuilt upon its ancient site in old Jerusalem.

*  

The key points, therefore, are:

that something very wrong happens in the most sacred place of all on earth, the place where HaShem / Allah has chosen to have His temple

and that because this has been prophesied as one of the "signs of the times" that signal the end of the world, the Temple Mount itself is heavily contested by members of the three faiths -- the issues being who should have sovereignity over it, who should have day-to-day control over it, what physical buildings should be torn down, remain or be rebuilt there -- and what spiritual ceremonies should be take place there, in accordance with the pleasure of God.

Analysis, cont'd:

My point in choosing my beads here is to illustrate the notion of the defiling of sacred space as being one of the most powerful drivers of human political action -- and to note that the same essential revulsion is felt on both sides of the dispute between Jews and Muslims.  

My first bead is this:

Here we have a Jewish extremist, talking about the presence of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount as the abomination of desolation.  

By way of complete contrast, here's my second bead:

Sheikh al-Hawali is a signficant clerical critic of the Saudi regime within Saudia Arabia, and a personal hero to bin Laden.  From his perspective, the Al-Aqsa compound is already home to the "temple" that God prefers, and it is the raising of the Israeli flag over the Noble Sanctuary at the end of the Six-Day War that constitutes the abomination.Comment:  

I trust that these two beads, taken together, will illustrate just how striking the parallelisms and opppositions within a conflict can be.

Analysis, cont'd:

The point here is to show the notion of sacred space being defiled as one of the most powerful drivers of human political action, and to note the specific parallelism between extreme Israeli and Islamic perspectives on the topic of the Temple Mount / Noble Sanctuary:  

That completes the second phase of the analytic beadgame.  In the next phase, I'll note some aspects of what we have seen so far that deserve particular comment -- including the way in which this ties into the "bigger picture" of world terrorism.

Analysis, cont'd:

Let's quickly connect the two clusters we have thus far:  

I'd like to make a long link between domination by unbelievers in our first cluster, and the Islamic version of abomination of desolation in the second, since from bin Laden's perspective as articulated in his fatwas, the specific form of "domination by unbelievers" that is problematic in Jerusalem is domination of the Noble Sanctuary / Temple Mount by Israel since 1967, which is no less specifically identified as the "abomination of desolation" by al-Hawali in his Day of Wrath.  

Thus:

This isn't a terribly significant linkage, but it does allow us to view any further Goliath / asymmetric warfare materials we may run across with some reference to Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa and the Temple Mount, and vice versa.  

*  

and now for the most interesting part...

Conclusion:

I said above:

In this part of our analysis, I'll familiarize you with some of the intricate details that surround the current conflict over Jerusalem, and make you privy to one piece of intelligence about Osama bin Laden that has been largely overlooked by all but a few scholars, and which has important possible implications for the War on Terrorism.

I'd like to go back to that bead in which Sheikh al-Hawali gives his prediction of the end of the world.

Al-Hawali's book, The Day of Wrath, is an Islamic work in essentially the same genre as Hal Lindsey's Late, Great Planet Earth -- a work which interprets the current world situation in terms of the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel and Revelation.  David Cook of Rice University has shown that there are hundreds of Islamic books and pamphlets offering interpretation of current events in terms of the "end times", and offering a variety of suggestions as to where we are on the timeline.  The theme of the great final battle of good and evil is widespread, in other words, and al-Hawali's book falls within a far broader current of apocalyptic expectation within Islam.  

Bin Laden's awareness of this current within contemporary Islam is illustrated by his use of the "Gharqad Tree" hadith -- a saying attributed to the Prophet which speaks about the final battle as a battle fought between the Muslims and the Jews:

David Cook finds bin Laden's fatwas and overall motivation "more political than apocalyptic" despite his use of this hadith, but suggests that he is no doubt aware that "harping on this secondary theme can ignite apocalyptic fervor among the masses".  

That's the context in which I would like to add my next bead, which offers an illuminating quote from Osama bin Laden:

As it happens, bin Laden has mentioned Sheikh al-Hawali on more than one occasion: the two men come from the same religious milieu, and al-Hawali has been described as a "personal hero" of bin Laden.  Here, though, he specifies that he has read al-Hawali -- though not The Day of Wrath, which I believe was published after bin Laden made this particular statement.

Conclusion, cont'd:

When we place our two most recent beads together:

we have bin Laden as a potential reader of al-Hawali who is at least sensitive to the Gharqad Tree hadith, and by implication to the notion that he is operating (as are we all) in the immediate run-up to the final apocalyptic battle.  

Connect that cluster, in turn, to our previous cluster:  

 

as shown above, via the bead in which al-Hawali predicts that the final battle itself will occur in or around the year 2012 CE, and the possibility arises that bin Laden has read and been impressed by al-Hawali's prediction, and thus views his own campaign as one which builds to a culmination nine years from now.

Conclusion, cont'd:

We can now add in one final bead, which we'll call tempo of asymmetric warfare:

The US doctrine of shock and awe, and the importance of rapid tempo in the celebrated "Boyd cycle" are both calculated in terms of speed and acceleration -- but if bin Laden is working to a timeline based on al-Hawali's work, his preferred tempo may be considerably slower than US analysts realize, and this in turn may bring him right in line with the necessities of asymmetrical warfare.

Conclusion, cont'd:

Finally, we can connect the dots:  

 

What we have here is a plausible "engine" by which scriptural and apocalyptic drivers from within bin Laden's tradition can combine with the necessities of contemporary asymmetric warfare to define the tempo at which bin Laden will wish to prosecute his jihad.  

This analysis is speculative, unless and until the debriefing of al-Qaida members confirms or refutes the hypothesis that bin Laden may be influenced by Sheikh al-Hawali's timeline -- but as I trust this analysis makes clear, that inquiry is one which is worth making...

Addendum:

My friend and colleague Michelle Paradis raised the questions which follow with blue emphasis, and I am including them along with my responses here because (among other things) they illustrate the way in which this particular analytic mapping could combine with others illustrating Islamist dependence on the honor-shame system, etc.

I needed TWO glasses of cool fresh water after reading the speculative analysis above. Fascinating and ... SCARY.

In my own mind, I try to compare it with say, a white paper on a similar subject, a New Yorker or Atlantic anecdotal piece, and a mathematical model of the situation - I'm thinking of those three as the genres this form of analysis is, so to speak, mostly in competition with (they actually each serve a purpose, to be sure, but the weaknesses are critical IMO):

white paper: http://www.csis.org/burke/mees/upagainstthewall.pdf

magazine article: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/hoffman.htm -- you'll love this!!!

model: http://www.hps-inc.com/cowboys.asp

scenario plan: http://www.generonconsulting.com/Publications/Mont_Fleur.PDF

role play: http://www.csis.org/isp/sv/index.htm

*

if we accept this analysis as a possible scenario, how would we use the same tool to provide possible solutions??

This particular board suggests that tempo is an issue, and the first thing I'd do if I was working in counter-terrorism would be to add a question or two about al-Hawali to standard interrogations, trying to see if the connection with 2012 was substantiated.  If it was, that's an important strategic insight -- because the really "big bang" effects are likely to come later in the sequence.  

I'd use similar materials quoting the Hamas charter on the Gharqad Tree if I was trying to get people to grasp the potential al-Qaida-Palestinian alignment on apocalyptic grounds:

stoning disobedient children: http://www.chalcedon.edu/report/99jan/einwechter.shtml

There are some distances that can't be bridged by showing parallels between an "alien" culture and aspects of one's own contemporary or historical culture, but to the extent that such parallels can serve a bridging function, I'd use close cross-cultural parallels to explore the mind and heart of the "other" (in education), and to give insight (in negotiation and conflict resolution).  Ideally, seeing that something one complains of in the other is also a feature of one's own approach can lead to a sort of "dropping of charges" like the cancelling out of identical terms on both sides of an equation - but here we're getting closer even to therapy than to conflict resolution perhaps.  In an educational setting, for instance, I might focus on the two abomination beads, and hope that people on each "side" would be able to better understand the other via sympathy with their concerns.  

In fleshing out the religious dimension for policy-related purposes, I might also stress how this board shows possible integration between cutting-edge warfare (asymmetrical, networked) and the religious driver - but I'd no doubt add other OBL beads about shame and honor, like this one:

While in Korea, Linebarger masterminded the surrender of thousands of Chinese troops who considered it shameful to give up their arms. He drafted leaflets explaining how the soldiers could surrender by shouting the Chinese words for 'love,' 'duty,' 'humanity,' and 'virtue'--words that happened, when pronounced in that order, to sound like 'I surrender' in English. He considered this act to be the single most worthwhile thing he had done in his life."  

http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/otherbooks.htm

*  

I guess what I'm saying is that the problems we're looking at are complicated in a way that means many actors (voices) and many tensions (links, oppositions, overlapping concerns) are a work in them -- and consequently there will be many ways of selecting the crucial nodes of a given problem, and many styles and approaches to solving it.  

I'm really keen to see what use different people, with different needs and different knowledges, will make of this process, both solo and in groups...