Cards for Insight: Monkey Mind & The Lighthouse
In a network, problems and solutions.
Use the cards to explore new perspectives
and gain insight around a chosen question.
Cards for Insight: Paths and Preferable Outcomes
In a network, conversations that mind, hold generative space and cultivate paths to preferable outcomes.
— Paths?
— Yes. Play. Address worthwhile dilemmas, map moves, unfold paths.
Map moves conducive to knowledge flow and knowledge mapping.
In a network, trust, movement; movement, trust.
“Trust movement.”
— Alfred Adler
Trust is 103% about your proactive divestment from the primacy
of suspicion. Through the purposeful divestment you evolve, and,
through relational meaning-making, you extend and receive trust,
from an ever expanding circles of others.
If you find yourself thinking “yeah, right” when reading this,
you have work to do. Go. Do.
Card: Evolving
Evolving involves developing resilience,
adapting to challenges and changes
with strength, flexibility and a newfound
sense of purpose and direction.
and resolve worthwhile dilemmas
Monkey Mind (horizontal)
Monkey mind provides invaluable signal from the hustle and bustle of ordinary life, and even more so now that we are finding ourselves and billions of other humans, online.
Clay Shirky:
- Here comes everybody.
John Kellden:
- I’d rather they didn’t.
x: intelligence turned ability
y: behavior turned agency
z: information turned knowledge
Lighthouse (vertical)
Lighthouse is, to me, the vertical set of chakras aligned to our spinal cord, as either a bioenergetic reality or, a compelling image, diagram and metaphor of our psychospiritual development. To me, the monkey mind and the lighthouse integrate, forming a toroidal field, a field of potential, which it is then up to me to actualize and realize, given my umwelt and sign use, in light of the umwelten of others and what adjacent possible we choose to explore. Again, to me, the spheroid spiraling lines of inquiry around the spheroid torus that is the potential fullness of myself, is an attempt of spiritualizing the lines of inquiry (V. Nabokov).
“The spiral is a spiritualized circle.
In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled,
has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free.”
— Vladimir Nabokov
As we pursue our iterated adjacent possibles, unfolding lines of inquiry, capturing a more or less relevant next through sign use, we now and then enjoy smooth sailing (with its risks of becoming Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again) or, more often than we’d care for, worthwhile dilemmas.
I’m leaving out the deepdive here: chreods, evolutionary fitness spaces and becoming stuck inside, whether narratives, local optima or our own personal favorite, our personal ken comfort zone, defended by our skillful first line of defense, our opinion on things, on everything under the sun.
If we find ourselves circling back, eternally, to the same old same old fave opinions, ours, or those in our posse, we probably need to read Nabokov.
Cards for Insight: Worthwhile dilemmas
Games people play, and they really shouldn’t.
Men in power have perverted agency.
Marketers have perverted play.
Ordinary people have perverted and devolved practical wisdom,
substituting social cognition with memes and emojis.
These three virtues: play, agency and practical wisdom,
need to be reclaimed and re-purposed. Monkey Mind
and Lighthouse; dopamine hit shiny content like button
clicking and essential character; online mindless
murmuration and evolutionary purpose.
In the midst of your swinging between idle mind
and agitated monkey mind: awakening.
“…by night the stars themselves glimmered from the
surface of the paddies, and the river of light whirled
through the darkness underfoot as well as above;
there seemed no ground in front of my feet, only the
abyss of star-studded space falling away forever.”
— David Abram
As part of your awakening, of your attention turned situational
awareness, the gateway drug to awakening, is perception.
“Perception is not something
that happens to us, or in us.
It is something we do.”
— Alva Noë
What are you doing? What worthwhile dilemma would make a difference for you and quite a few others, should you address it?
… gather around a worthwhile dilemma
and formulate generative questions …
Card: UPOODDEAU
Understand, Perceive, Observe,
Orient, Design, Decide, Enact,
Act and Unfold, a generative
sequence and conversational
and convivial superset to OODA.
… pick cards and add your thoughts before, after, between, around and to the cards, engage in card-play conversations around center, generative questions, with human and AI-assisted card associations and annotations addressing worthwhile dilemmas, cultivating shared understanding as generative closure, with thoughts, insights, moves, paths and preferable outcomes evaluated against envisioned end game scenarios and create knowledge artifacts building on the card-session participation …
Card: Understanding
Understanding as 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.
… cultivate shared understanding as generative closure …
Cards for Insight: Modular process onto-epistemology
There’s a pattern language underlying the Cards for Insight card deck with its 500 cards, and there’s an even deeper layer underneath the pattern language, a modular process onto-epistemology. If we are to rekindle our ideas, eg the idea of democracy, modular process onto-epistemologies, pattern languages and cards designed as generative play, adjacent possible exploration and shared understanding affordances, can help. If we choose to play different games, if we succeed in meeting the universe halfway,
our use of modular process onto-epistemologies were good enough.
“Meeting the universe halfway.”
— Karen Barad
Card: Seed
What seeds of potential are present in your life?
What fertile soil for your actionable insights to
sprout? How can you cultivate connections to
support your growth and to benefit to others?
Nature Alive
— Alfred North Whitehead
“For some, nature is mere appearance and mind is the sole reality. For others, physical nature is the sole reality and mind is an epiphenomenon. Here the phrases ‘mere appearance’ and ‘epiphenomenon’ obviously carry the implication of slight importance for the understanding of the final nature of things.
The doctrine that I am maintaining is that neither physical nature nor life can be understood unless we fuse them together as essential factors in the composition of ‘really real’ things whose interconnections and individual characters constitute the universe.
The first step in the argument must be to form some concept of what life can mean. Also we require that the deficiencies in our concept of physical nature should be supplied by its fusion with life. And we require that, on the other hand, the notion of life should involve the notion of physical nature.
Now as a first approximation the notion of life implies a certain absoluteness of self-enjoyment. This must mean a certain immediate individuality, which is a complex process of appropriating into a unity of existence the many data presented as relevant by the physical processes of nature. Life implies the absolute, individual self-enjoyment arising out of this process of appropriation.
I have, in my recent writings, used the word ‘prehension’ to express this process of appropriation. Also I have termed each individual act of immediate self-enjoyment an ‘occasion of experience’. I hold that these unities of existence, these occasions of experience, are the really real things which in their collective unity compose the evolving universe, ever plunging into the creative advance.”
— Alfred North Whitehead
We never left nature. We wake up to ourselves, in the very
same moment as we remember we are having a temporary,
embodied, eco-systemic experience.
… gather around worthwhile dilemmas,
formulate generative center questions …
Card: Lifestyle
Lifestyle is 103% about how humans
evolve through, understand and enact
relational meaning-making together
with other humans, in light of:
- local and bioregional stewardship
- science, art, design, paradigms, plateaus, zeitgeist, perspectives, language, sign use, adjacent generative playground and technology
- relational meaning-making, design cybernetics, lines of inquiry,
information turned knowledge and paths of purposeful action
- psychospiritual development
… cultivate shared understanding as generative closure …
Cards for Insight: Generative Questions
What is its purpose?
“Take music, for instance. It is connected to reality less than anything else,
or if connected at all, it’s done mechanically, not by way of ideas, just by a sheer sound, devoid of any associations.
And yet, music, as if by some kind of miracle, gets through to our heart.
What is it that resonates in us in response to noise brought to harmony, making it the source of the greatest delight? Which stuns us and brings us together?
What is its purpose? And most importantly, who needs it?”
— Andrei Tarkovsky
What is your purpose? What unique dent in the universe is yours to make?
Cards for Insight: Vertical Technology
How to remain in charge of your own spine in the midst of social media distractions. Chakric (re)alignment as a psychospiritual practice.
Crown
Problem Space: Presence
Third Eye
Players: Visions
Throat
Cards and other building blocks of creativity: Questions, Cards, Conversation and your Taking Thought, between
Heart
Story: Relating with truth, beauty and love as if three attractors of your human becoming
Solar Plexus
103% of our human wicked problems are not due to finding ourselves in problem spaces, but how we address them, by insisting on our own comfort zone personal ken maps, our mostly uninformed opinion.
Map: Power with > Power over
Over time, our default maps, models and theories, devolve into social constructs, convenient shortcuts of collective thought.
ITIMNEA (social constructs): Instinctual social animals, Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks, Ecosystems, Agency
Sacral
Context: Desire
Curled up in fetal position binge-watching Netflix, eating berries.
Root
Solution Space: Nature
Generative Review: Synkinaesthesia
The generative review of chakric realignment is learning into aliveness in a context of enkinaesthesia (field, ambiance, small group genius) and synkinaesthesia (vector, path, alignment around preferable outcomes).
Card: Enkinaesthesia
In a network, attention turned
situational awareness.
Synkinaesthesia is to chreods, unfolding paths and vectors, what enkinaesthesia is to umwelten, life and signs co-extending and fields.
Our Future Societies: Thin Air & Lighthouses
In a network, social presencing is connecting the dots between
inclusive intention and effective, convivial action.
Cards for Insight: Social cognition at social machine scale
Cards are card-play affordances, at individual insight
Card: Identity
“One of the most insidious things about enclosures is how they
eradicate the culture of the commons and our memory of it.
The old ways of doing things; the social practices that once bound
a people together; the cultural traditions that anchored people to
a landscape; the ethical norms that provided a stable identity — all
are swept aside to make room for a totalizing market culture.”
— David Bollier
Card: Communication
“Standard game theory doesn’t take communication into account because it’s so complicated to do the math for the expected payoffs.
But just because the math doesn’t exist and the general formula may never be solved, it doesn’t mean we can’t explore the idea using agent-based modeling.
Communication is critical for cooperation; we think communication is the reason cooperation occurs. It’s generally believed that there are five independent mechanisms that foster cooperation.
But these mechanisms are really just ways to ensure that cooperators play mostly with other cooperators and avoid all others.
Communication is a universal way to achieve that. We plan to test the idea directly in yeast cells.”
— Christoph Adami
… embrace our shared understanding, encompasssing yeast cells, beer, gathering at our local places, Guinness, Ireland and the rest of the small blue-green corner of the known Universe, meeting it halfway …
Cards for Insight: Community — On Wells, Bridges & Lighthouses
In a network, community is the worthwhile dilemma.
Cathal Ó Searcaigh:
‘Is doiligh tobar a aimsiú faoi láthair,’
arsa Bríd, ag líonadh an bhabhla athuair.
‘Tá siad folaithe i bhfeagacha agus i bhféar,
tachtaithe ag caileannógach agus cuiscreach,
ach in ainneoin na neamhairde go léir
níor chaill siad a dhath den tseanmhianach.
Aimsigh do thobar féin, a chroí,
óir tá am an anáis romhainn amach:
Caithfear pilleadh arís ar na foinsí.’’Tis hard to find a well nowadays’,
says Bridget filling the bowl again.
‘They’re hidden in rushes and grass,
choked by green scum and ferns,
but, despite the neglect,
they’ve lost none of their true mettle.
Seek out your own well, my dear,
for the age of want is near:
There will have to be a going back to sources.’
— Seamus Heaney
Cards for Insight: There’s A River
If the 21C will see us bridge from old, obsolete narratives, reaching out to the other, navigating adjacent possibles, traversing the Waste Land of Big Data, finding ourselves consciously as if for the first time at the other side — we will have to address all the dimensions of risk for the baby in our arms, as well as pouring the old, funny-smelling bathwater over the side, allowing it to be swept away by the river, clear to the sea.
… gather around worthwhile dilemmas,
formulate generative center questions …*
Card: Mind
Heuristics for a Superset View of Mind.
- Holistic Integration: Consider the interplay of
cognitive, emotional, and physiological elements in
understanding consciousness. - Dynamic Adaptability: Recognize that both
algorithmic and non-algorithmic processes
contribute to cognitive functions, allowing for
flexibility and adaptation. - Contextual Awareness: Understand that the
mind operates within a broader context,
encompassing cultural, social, and environmental
factors. - Embrace Uncertainty: Acknowledge the
inherent mysteries of consciousness and the
limitations in our current understanding. - Interdisciplinary Exploration: Encourage
collaboration between neuroscience, philosophy,
psychology, and artificial intelligence to foster a
comprehensive understanding of the mind.
… cultivate shared understanding as generative closure …
Cards for Insight: Five dimensions of risk that needs to be addressed
A too institutionalized response to the current atomization, fragmentation and devil-take-the-hindmost among a wide spectrum of public discourse and human effort, is not only insufficient, it risks dead-ending almost all policies before they even can begin to be implemented.
1. Fragmentation, atomisation
Solution: offering governance dialogue spaces, nurturing meaningful grassroots connectivity through anecdotes, stories and narrative.
2. All policies are symptoms of larger issues
Large, top-down, technocratically perfect, agency-spun policies — fail.
Solution: small steps, building on the first point.
3. There’s no, one, definitive formulation of policy
Solution: sufficiently inclusive (digital, social) discourse and networking, annealing policy formulation capability (aka less clueless crap) and enabling different, quicker and more responsive policy updates.
4. Every issue is unique
Water as one example issue, will not be resolved until the unique challenges and the unique opportunities are sufficiently explored.
Solution: local stakeholder dialogue, towards developing listening capability, towards rich and diverse context, towards shared understanding what works.
5. Governance is continuous redesign
Entrenched, polarized, polarizing positions is synonymous with not being in charge, not assuming responsibility, not properly assuming office.
Solution: The essential measure of governance and opposition is metalogue — conversations that mind, hold generative space and cultivate paths to preferable outcomes — where the people in charge are accountable for seven generations to come, opposition is charged with keeping the discourse vibrant, relevant and convivial and everyone, including you, is charged with keeping an honest course.
You need to let go of your borderline solipsist pontification reinforcing shared misery, in order to get to Fanad Lighthouse, Donegal. You need to move, you need to make different moves, guided by different maps.
Cards for Insight: Map Moves to Spirals
Map moves conducive to knowledge flow and knowledge mapping.
Use the cards to explore new perspectives
and gain insight around a chosen question.
Your question is your center, our Lighthouse and our card-moves,
how we see each other through. Small moves, Ellie, small moves.
Cards for Insight: How to Play^n
1. Formulate a question
2. Pick three cards
3. Add your thoughts between
Card: Coordination
What coordination of human
effort, our social web?
Card: Question
A question is mind rediscovering
the generative nature of relating
with reality and transforming it
into possibility.
Card: Understanding
Holding space for the
possibility of knowledge
as it unfolds its relevance
to unexplored aspects
of things known.
In a network, we play^n to win^n.
Generative Review
A divestment of belief, in a context of behavior turned agency.
“The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen,
the hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye
…
No porters. No interpreter. No taxi.
You carried your own burden and very soon
your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.”
— Seamus Heaney
The texts that begins and ends with … can be seen, understood and used as patterns of play, situated before, after and between the cards, forming generative sequences, facilitating structure-preserving continuity and transformation, paths unfolding, from personal ken comfort zones to preferable outcomes.
Play? Sign up here:
Adjacent Possible Playground
https://adjacentpossible.social/#card
Cards for Insight: LLM’s
Cards, patterns of play and card-play conversations combine,
facilitating exploring paths between worthwhile dilemmas,
generative center questions and preferable outcomes.
There’s around 500 cards in the source deck, with more than 120k
two-card and 21M three-card combinations. With four-, five- and
six-card combinations mapping to LLM’s, Large Language Models, facilitating human associations(card-play) combining with
AI-assisted annotations(prompts and responses).
Think cards with an underlying pattern language and with an underlying Modular Process Onto-Epistemology forming part of an Online Commonplace, with a searchable Modular Knowledge Repository.
Seeking, playing and finding, walking each other home.
