44 Of Dwelling and Escaping

What does metastable integration~segregation look like in reality? Imagine that over some brief epoch in its ongoing metastable trajectory, the phase relation of a coordinating system continuously changes in time. In this epoch, even though the coupling strength between them is greater than zero, coordinating elements exhibit a tendency toward independent, segregated action, as if they were uncoupled, but not quite. As the escaping coordination variable phi (φ) approaches, say in-phase, it briefly dwells there, exhibiting a tendency for cooperative, integrated, coordination. Following this dwelling, the relative phase escapes again until it eventually converges toward and dwells near anti-phase, exhibiting a tendency again for integrated coordination. Its dwelling there soon ends and the phase relation escapes again, and so on. In the metastable mode, the system lives in a virtual sea of metastability. It never gets stuck.