Emérgéntly Spirals
Why Anticlockwise?
The original reason is so that the spiral exits going up to the right, because that seems a natural direction to flow.
If you imagine the spiral is coming out towards you, it looks like it is spiralling anticlockwise.
However if you walked around to the other side of the same spiral so it was going away from you, it would look like it is spiralling clockwise (like most seashells do).
Why Spirals and Not Cycles?
Cycles always repeat in the same order. Night always follows day, summer always follows spring. However, although the sequence of seasons is the always the same, each individual season is always different from previous years. The spiral illustrates that difference, for example, every summer is not the same, but there are repeating patterns of interdependence between seasons. Emérgéntly is a framework to focus on those interdependencies and interrelationships.
Does the Order Matter?
Yes, but it is not always the same order.
The Emérgéntly Framework consistently spirals through the metaphors of Fire, Earth, Water, Air, BUT the order depends on what makes most logical sense for us to understand the particular situation. Our brains easily comprehend a linear sequence, but life is seldom linear and usually many things happen simultaneously and interdependently, so the "logical order" may not be the way the system actually works. An Emérgéntly spiral is just a two dimensional map of a system and "the map is not the territory".