Card Sessions: Encounters, Entanglements and Enkinaesthesia
Formats weaving how people think and how nature works.
This post is 103% about understanding synkinaesthesia.
Synkinaesthesia is to vector, what enkinaesthesia (learning turned aliveness, sensibilities turned performance, virtues turned paths) is to field.
But first, story, a nineteen step scenic, scenius and sceenius detour:
— Why?
— You need to familiarize yourself with one of the roped paths through.
— Through what, exactly?
— Through the Waste Land, through Big Data, beyond the Grand Theft Data of Proprietary Platforms.
1. Stranger Turned Friend
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not only feel the time was not wasted, it instigated a beginning small step of turning stranger into friend.
2. Root For Character
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for, or, something deeply rooted in Swedish mythology, something borderline unfathomable.
When in doubt, go Patanjali.
3. A Glass of Zinfandel At A Swedish Mansion
Every character should want something, and that something should always be a glass of red, shared with friends, retiring comfortably at a countryside mansion.
4. Seeds of Phronesis
Every sentence must do one of five things: reveal character, advance the action, instigate meaning-making inside the readers mind, turn the reading into seeds of phronesis, inducing continuity amidst change, and change amidst continuity. The generative review of phronesis is ambiance. Ambiance is Lembas for the following fifteen steps.
— — —
Way Station
Let’s say you open a door, go through a portal. You will find yourself different, from having gone through, from finding yourself in a new place. 103% of the whole thing is to return and tell the others about it.
“They told me they were headed for a planet the name of which I had not heard before, and they talked among themselves, gaily and happily, but in such a way that I did not seem to be left out. From their talk I gained the fact that some form of art was being presented at the festival on this planet.
The art form was not alone of music or painting, but was composed of sound and color and emotion and form and other qualities for which there seem to be no words in the language of the Earth, and which I do not entirely recognize, only gaining the very faintest inkling of what they were talking of in this particular regard.
I gained the impression of a three-dimensional symphony, although this is not entirely the right expression, which had been composed, not by a single being, but by a team of beings.
They talked of the art form enthusiastically and I seemed to understand that it would last for not only several hours, but for days, and that it was an experience rather than a listening or seeing and that the spectators or audience did not merely sit and listen, but could, if they wished, and must, to get the most out of it, be participants.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station
— — —
5. Advance Through An Adjacent Possible Portal
Start as close to the end as possible. At times, even closer than that.
There. Go. Do.
intermission: Sigur Ros, Ara Batur
6. The Equipotential Nature of Eudaimonia
Be a sensemaking equipotentialist, serendipitifying equilibrist and stigmergifying eudaimonist. No matter how sweet, innocent and simple your story, make interesting things happen to it, in order that the readers may first become profoundly confused, and then, from a slightly different vantage point, they’ll get a glimpse of themselves, and begin to see what they are made of. They’re 103% stardust, but don’t tell them that yet.
7. Stay True At The Expense of Playing To The Gallery
Write to please just one person. Sometimes less than one. Stay true. Never trust yourself when you are too pleasing. Never trust yourself when you are too abrasive either. Never confuse character with playing one of the characters in your mind.
“Trust movement.”
— Alfred Adler
8. And, In The End…
And, In The End, The Story You Become, Is Equal To The Story, You Make.
If you open a window and make love to the whole world so to speak, your story will get pneumonia, Covid-19 or Covid-23. See? Hold my Corona?
We made it? What happened? We happened.
9. Abundance Begets Plenitude
Give your readers way too much information, beyond their ability to grasp, as soon as possible. To heck with communication. Plenitude!
Plenitude, cf Dane Rudhyar.
10. Impossibly Generative Joint Lunch Breaks
Readers should have such an abundance of understanding of what is going on, where and why, who, when, whereto and why not, that they could finish the unfolding story of their own lives themselves, should algorithms consume what remains of the writers lunch. This here step 10 is the elevensies part of the whole unfolding wholeness.
11. Wow! How?
— How do we pass it on?
— In conversations, in conversations that mind, cultivate and matter. Do you remember when Aragorn tossed the Hobbits an apple?
— Yes?
— That.
12. How Would We Know?
Flow. Flow is how we know.
13. What To Do With All The Knowledge?
You move. You engage in joint sauntering, towards preferable outcomes.
You can also apply knowledge as a scaffolding to spheroid spirals, but that’s for another post.
14. Catalogue? No. Metalogue!
In metalogue: meaning-making, moving along unfolding lines of inquiry, essential character turning evolutionary purpose. Along your luminous path, you will encounter stragglers: human beings who are wearing a worried frown: bank accounts, bayes theorems and bored apes. They’re on different paths. You could try give them a shout about the fantabulousness of requisite variety, but if they’re not listening to you, no worries.
15. Famished Last Words
Coffee. Coffee and swedish cinnamon buns. Interspersed with long stretches of Mosley, 800 cal. Coffee beans are grown in something called nature.
The difference between how nature thinks and how people work. Play is a superset of work.
16. Oh, And Just This One More Thing
Jorge Luis Borges, for all your content quality control needs. And/or Alfred North Whitehead, for when you feel a need to have a go at process and reality. For all your tech needs, there’s Ursula K. Le Guin. And Doris Lessing, to understand why you need to occasionally wear a social cognition hazmat suit.
17. Social Stigmergy For The Win^n
Our reach, exceeding our grasp, again and again, until beautiful beyond belief. 103% of the reason why humans are online, is clicking on buttons.
18. Cards
Cards as decision quality and possibility space affordances. Card decks as frames. Because you need to both frame thinks and reframe things, conducive to gatherings, weaving between situational awareness and preferable outcomes.
19. Generative Sequences and Roped Paths
Because structure-preserving transformation. Slightly less lossy:
Paths (intention(thinks, great ideas), Questions(gatherings, sessions), Cards (artifacts, play affordances), Considerations, Annotations, Generative Closure (good enough stopping rules, S-Curves (chreods) — Large Finite Sets of cards, good measures and methods in service to preferable outcomes.
Cards addressing your generative driving questions.
This seven-fold (when applied: Card Sessions at Social Machine scope and scale) patterning and generative sequence can be seen, understood and played as a contextual intelligence and systems intelligence approach.
The approach can be combined with sets of relevant formats, eg for small group genius, individual ingenuity, Card Sessions, labs, gatherings, pods, squads, events, places, platforms and playgrounds.
Cards are roped path for synkinaesthetic vectors through enkinaesthetic fields. Thank you for following along this sceenius detour.
— Cards?
— Yes. Here’s one:
Card: Understanding
What if understanding is our
ability to hold space for the
possibility of knowledge, as
it emerges, unfolds, directs
and discloses its relevance
to unexplored aspects of
things known?
Questions, Cards, Card Sessions —formats co-evolving with slightly more human and slightly more nature ways of seeing, observing, playing and scaling.
The generative review of scaffolding is flow.
flow = structure x process
“x” = patterning f(patterns of interaction, semiosphere)
“x” = here and now
Card Sessions
Solving for seven generation societies.
The generative review of signal processing is unfolding wholeness.
Card Sessions
Cards considered in light of questions.
The generative review of Annotation is Library. Library forming part of Community.
Card Sessions
Helping you reflect, reframe and rethink.
The generative review of reflection, reframing and rethinking is 9E cognition.
Card Sessions: Play^n, Game^n and Win^n
Card Sessions
All Card Sessions form part, parcel, parsing and participatory inquiry of Card Session Labs.
The generative review of lab is situational awareness, turning intelligence into ability to hold generative space, and vectors of understanding guiding to preferable outcomes.
Card Sessions
A card session arrives at generative closure when there’s insight, alignment around the center question turned path and agreement on next steps.
The generative review of movement is trust.
trust, movement; movement, trust
Cards are possibility space affordances.
behavior > understanding understanding > agency
problem space > cards and conversations > possibility space
scaffolding understanding
Card: Structure
“To be human requires the study of structure.”
— Alfred North Whitehead
One of the things that holds a great many humans back, is the belief that there’s a clear separation between behavior and problem space.
There never was such a separation.
How people think and how nature works, those two notions are intimately entangled.
encountering entanglement: conjuring personal opinion
Often when we encounter entanglement, our personal minds conjure an opinion or three as part of our set of coping patterns, responding to the situation at hand. Opinion resides at oblique angles and planes to generative review.
“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.”
— Gregory Bateson
Regardless of the incommensurability of the two notions, people and nature, our growing awareness, heightened by our learning how they play out in our current climate crisis of consciousness and action, despite the difference between people and nature, the two notions can be seen, understood and resolved, as if forming a necessary creative tension resolving into a different path, a good enough premise for unfolding wholeness.
learning as a function of path and virtue; virtue and path
Learning
The acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught.
The arrival at understanding via perception, observation, orientation, design, decision-making, enaction, action and unfoldment.
The association of an idea with other ideas, configurations of mind brought to the surface of consciousness and the sensibilities, orientations, literacies, enactments and habits resulting from this process.
Decision-making f(will, flow)
- intelligence turned ability
- behavior turned agency
- attention turned situational awareness
- will turned flow f(intelligence, behavior, attention)
The generative review of decision-making is path and virtue; virtue and path.
flow = structure x process
The two complex responsive processes related to the application of decision-making is
- path: anticipation
- virtue: autopoiesis
The generative review of insufficient or poor decision-making is
- path: muddling through f(worry)
- virtue: opinion f(doubt)
suffering = muddling through x opinion
“x” = patterning f(mind, configurations of mind)
Association
“…the process whereby one idea acquires the power to attract another from the depths of memory to the surface of consciousness, and to the habit resulting from this process.”
— C. S. Peirce
Understanding: Generative Review
The generative review of understanding is essential character f(virtue) and evolutionary purpose f(path).
enkinaesthesia and synkinaesthesia
The generative review of events, encounters and entanglement is enkinaesthesia (field) and synkinaesthesia (vector).
Card: Synkinaesthesia
Mind evolving in service to the regenerative co-agency of evolution. Mind evolving, with our thoughts and felts turning increasingly proprioceptive, with phronesis guiding our performance, virtues turned paths, lines of emergent, unfolding, cultivating, extending and evolving participatory inquiry, with life and signs, co-extensive, inviting and co-arising: embracing, enacting and stewarding the dialogical nature of the pervasive thinking, feeling, gathering and enacting of being, in service to the immanent and regenerative co-agency of evolution.
Card Sessions: Unfolding Wholeness
The generative review of information processing is emergence, unfolding and requisite variety. The generative review of signal processing is unfolding wholeness.
attention turned situational awareness turned possibility
Cards are possibility space affordances. The generative review of cards and conversations; conversations and cards, is possibility.
Possibility
- understanding situational awareness
- small group genius
- insight
- alignment around center question(s)
- agreement on next steps
- increased clarity about preferable outcomes
Possibility can also be seen as a systems intelligence property, situated in the intersect of data, map and story.
The legend to such data, mapping and story (story as a generative verb), can be found and further annotated, in the intersect of solution space (generative sequences) and patterns — patterns of relationship, interaction, play and play^n.
relationship, interaction, play and play^n
Patterning
Intention(think, great idea), Question(gathering, session), Card(thing, play affordance), Consideration, Annotation, Generative Closure, Large Finite Set of good measures and methods in service to preferable outcomes.
This whole post can be distilled (using a patterning approach) to
“understanding synkinaesthesia”
This pattern, and others, forming a large finite set pattern language and modular process ontology, is what the social machine would put to good use when assisting us, augmenting individual, small group genius and human social collective intelligence.
Unpacking “understanding synkinaesthesia” is one of the reasons of this post. Another reason is to outline select parts of a scaffold, designed to help with seeing, playing and understanding in different ways, ways conducive to connecting, bridging and weaving between pattern language and language, between machine and human parts of interface and social computing.
