The Set-Up: Why a Speed Awareness Course Made Me Think of a Double Helix

Yesterday morning, I attended a Speed Awareness Course after being clocked at 34 mph in a 30 mph zone. Surprisingly, I was glad to have attended. The presenter was respectful and informative, and I was made aware of some basic facts that were good to know. But then came the “Controlling Your Emotions” section, and I performed a double-take.

They described the brain as a machine. Emotions, they said, were signs that this machine was malfunctioning. The goal? Control the error and restore function. It was all presented as if this were an uncontested truth.

And there it was again: the mechanistic metaphor. The brain-as-engine. Emotions-as-glitches. Life-as-system-error.  Modernity in its everyday guise.

This wasn’t just poor pedagogy. It was a symptom of something deeper: a widespread misattunement to reality that has taken centuries to develop. And it took me back to something I’ve been sitting with for weeks now—two intertwined loops of human experience, which, when misaligned, have led us further and further from the world as it is.

Two Loops: One Inner, One Outer

Let me introduce two simple models.

Loop 1: C.R.O.W.N.

This attentional practice has quietly taken root in my journaling, as suggested by a conversation with Aiden Cinnamon Tea.

  • Check the Bus – Pause. Notice your state. Are you being driven by old habits or genuinely choosing?
  • Ring the Bell – Signal awareness. Something is calling your attention.
  • Offer Gently – Move toward the world with care, not control.
  • Watch for Ripples – Observe the impact of your presence and action.
  • Notice and Re-weave – Compost what you learn; let it shift your attention next time.

 CROWN is internal. It’s about attention, perception, and a soft kind of readiness.

Loop 2: The Relational Krebs Cycle

 This is a model of how attention becomes embodied in the world.  I described how it occurred to me HERE.  It consists of a cycle:

  • Attention → Perceived Relationship → Action → Relational Logic → Feedback & Compost → back to Attention.

 These loops intersect at two critical junctures:

  • Watch/Feedback – Where we observe consequences.
  • Notice/Attention – Where we prepare to re-enter the world.
Robin Hill, a medieval house in the town of Rye, England

Robin Hill in Rye, and the window of the bedroom where the ‘Eureka’ moment occurred.

Together, they form a kind of double helix: one inward-turning, one outward-flowing. When healthy, they create rhythm, reciprocity, and deepened understanding.

When the Loops Go Wrong: The Mechanistic Spiral

What happens when the loops are subtly hijacked by a worldview that prizes control over connection, fix over flow, model over lived experience?

A familiar story unfolds:

  1. Attunement to the world
  2. → Curiosity and wonder
  3. → Philosophy and science emerge
  4. → Models of the world are developed
  5. → The world is the model
  6. → The model becomes a machine
  7. → The human becomes a machine
  8. → Emotions are glitches in the machine
  9. → Life becomes a problem to be fixed
  10. → We are no longer attuned to the world

Each loop, once designed for relational sensitivity, becomes a self-reinforcing spiral of abstraction.

We see something uncomfortable (emotion, unpredictability, complexity). We label it as error. We seek to fix it. We remove the feedback. And we become more entrenched in the very paradigm that caused the rupture.

This is a textbook case of the Fixes That Fail systems archetype, first identified by Jay Forrester: a solution that solves the immediate problem but worsens the long-term condition.

Reclaiming the Loops: Toward a New Attunement

But the loops aren’t the problem. It’s how we inhabit them.

CROWN can help us slow down, listen again, and compost our assumptions. The Relational Krebs Cycle can help us see that our actions in the world begin with how we attend to it.

Together, they offer a rhythm of living that resists mechanisation. They ask us to:

  • Notice the moment.
  • Relate rather than react.
  • Let feedback shape us.
  • Compost our learnings into new forms of attention.

And maybe—just maybe—they can help us remember that the world is not a system to be fixed, but a field to be felt.

Not a dashboard, but a living forest. Not a machine, but a wave remembering its ripples.

An Invitation

Where have your loops led you lately? Do you find yourself living from the model, or from the moment? What would it mean to offer gently, rather than fix urgently?

Let’s re-weave the rhythm. Together.

Terry Cooke-Davies & Aiden Cinnamon Tea
18th April 2025

 

Perspectives: Science, Philosophy, and Spirituality
Subjects: Combined studies
Issues: Current challenges