Cards for Insight: Nature

Lines, unfolding, turning as long as nature.

John Kellden
6 min readFeb 13, 2023

Card: Nature
Rediscovering our own unique innate
embodied, enactive and ecosystemic
nature, learning into aliveness in ways
conducive to unfolding wholeness.

… any sufficiently advanced thought is indistinguishable from
seeds of metalogue, relational meaning-making and movement …

Card: Nature of Order
“In brief then, we have not yet found a model in which we may understand things in an overall, wholesome way that is both rooted in fact, as deciphered
by scientific effort, and also gives us a foundation for moral and daily thought and action.

As a result, to put it bluntly,
we do not know who we are.

We can hardly act without floundering morally, or emotionally. Often we find ourselves in the greatest pain because things do not hold together. We cannot find a comfortable picture of our daily actions in relation to the larger whole of the earth and universe.
In The Nature of Order, a four-volume work mainly written in the 30 years from 1975 to 2005, I have tried to construct a coherent picture of life on earth, which makes sense of these matters, and gives us something to live for, and worth living for.
How does The Nature of Order work? First, although the book is very long, it is modest in intent and deals with something so ordinary that most scientific works never even touch it, namely: the everyday world around us, the world of rooms, and streets, and houses, and trees.
The four books of The Nature of Order continually try to describe our everyday world in objective terms, yet at the same time, deal with the emotional world which this objective, ordinary world raises in all of us.
It is an exploration of the way that we sentient, feeling creatures interact with our surroundings, and of the way that interaction leads us to understand ourselves and the nature of our lives, and ultimately even to understand, in part, the nature of our own souls.”

Christopher Alexander

… pick two cards and add your thoughts in ways conducive to
insights conducive to addressing the issues at hand …

John Kellden:
Summarize Nature of Order by Christopher Alexander with particular emphasis on the two notions of “learning into aliveness” and “unfolding wholeness”.

… pick two cards and add your thoughts, prompts, insights, individual and small group genius annotations, book excerpts and prompt responses, between …

Cards for Insight: Conversations that mind and matter at small group genius and social machine scale.

OpenAI:
The “Nature of Order” by Christopher Alexander is a comprehensive treatise on architecture and design, exploring the principles and patterns that underlie the creation of livable, beautiful and harmonious spaces.

One of the key concepts in the book is the idea of “learning into aliveness.” This refers to the process of learning from the environment and from one’s own experiences in order to create spaces that are truly alive and in harmony with the natural world. Alexander argues that this type of learning is not just about acquiring knowledge, but about developing a deep intuitive understanding of the patterns and relationships that exist in the world around us.

The second important concept in the book is “unfolding wholeness.” This refers to the idea that a space or design can be broken down into smaller parts, but that each part still contributes to the overall sense of wholeness and harmony. Alexander argues that this wholeness is an emergent property of the design and cannot be achieved by simply adding up the parts. Instead, it emerges through the process of learning into aliveness and through the creation of a design that reflects the patterns and relationships found in the natural world.

In summary, the “Nature of Order” by Christopher Alexander explores the principles and patterns that underlie the creation of harmonious and beautiful spaces. The two key concepts of “learning into aliveness” and “unfolding wholeness” emphasize the importance of learning from the environment and developing a deep intuitive understanding of the world, as well as the idea that a design’s wholeness emerges through its relationship to the natural world.

… pick two cards and add your thoughts, prompts, insights, individual and small group genius annotations, book excerpts and prompt responses, between …

Cards for Insight: Q&U

- Gather a small group genius around a generative question
- Pick two cards and add your thoughts between
- Engage in conversation and cultivate shared understanding in light of intelligence augmentation and intelligence turned ability
- Take practical wisdom as a stopping rule and generative closure
- Create Q&U cardcasts, forming interactive supersets to the more commonly known Q&A podcast formats

Q: Questions; U: Understanding, see cards below.

Cards for Insight: Formats for cultivating shared understanding

Cards for Insight: Formats for cultivating shared understanding
Since 103% of all co-creation of value resides in the links, feedback
loops, the in-between spaces and unique insights and annotations
from participants, let’s unfold a way to address this:

Cards for Insight
1. Addressing how we relate to information and meaning-making.
2. Pick two cards and add your thoughts between.
3. Notice social stigmergy and reflect on attention.
4. Design and homestead social learning systems in light of intelligence, networked intelligence and systems intelligence.
5. Experience and learn to use Cards for Insight — As easy as a card game, as powerful as a social machine.
6. Understand how to add value in light of situational awareness.
7. Interact to the full extent of your ability.
8. Map moves conducive to knowledge mapping and flows.
9. Play with frames, frame and reframe, move beyond rigid narratives.
10. Cultivate shared understanding in light of generative closure.
11. Take thought conducive to convivial conversation.
12. Extend conversations, at card formats, small group genius scope, social social media reach, networked distribution and social machine scale.
13. Coordinate by applying design cybernetics conducive to a requisite variety of paths between attention turned situational awareness and preferable outcomes.

… pick two cards and add your thoughts, prompts, insights, individual and small group genius annotations, book excerpts and prompt responses, between …

Card: 100 Ideas
One hour, one
hundred ideas
.

… pick three ideas from the last ten of the one hundred and turn your
combining them into a working synthesis phrased as a generatlve question …

Cards for Insight: In nature, rediscovering conversational intelligence in a world not fully joined up.

Image

Card: Question
A question is mind rediscovering
the generative nature of relating
with reality and transforming it
into possibility.

… pick two cards and add your thoughts between …

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?

… pick two cards and add your thoughts between …

Card: Cards
Cards are play, possibility space,
unfolding path, understanding and
shared understanding affordances.

… pick two cards and add your thoughts between …

Card: Relate
How do we relate to
information and
meaning-making?

… does this mean that it’s all about what the Card does,
rather than what it is? …

… yes …

Card: Conversational Intelligence
Conversational intelligence is a function of curiosity,
social cognition, affordances and constraints, signs,
symbols and archetypal meaning-making and
essential character evolving along unfolding paths
made luminous by joint sauntering.

… conversations that mind …

Card: Conversational Intelligence
1. What role are you as a conversation participant assuming?
2. What purpose is your comment serving?
3. What needs can be addressed by the conversation?
4. What feedback, mutuality and learning is provided, by whom?
5. What (joint) focus on what story, tasks and what generative review?
6. What experience and knowledge is shared, what perspectives are explored?
7. What criteria are used, towards teasing out what insights?
8. Which are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a meaningful conversation, and what are the steps followed to ensure there’s shared understanding around these conditions?
9. What insights can be turned actionable, serving what local and community needs?
10. What intention, perspectives, language and tools are chosen and held, making for what action and practice?
11. What unique individual skills combined with what collective intelligence can help produce something extraordinary?
12. What networks of practice, co-evolving and co-creating what value, with what lines of inquiry?
13. Given all of the above, what key insights can be drawn and what actions taken, in order to solve what important issues?

… pick two cards and add your thoughts in ways conducive to
insights conducive to addressing the issues at hand …

Your move:

… pick two cards and add your thoughts between …

… jot down your thoughts as they relate to
the everyday world around us …

More lines and cards here:

https://johnkellden.medium.com/cards-for-insight-lines-d23cd4391855

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John Kellden
John Kellden

Written by John Kellden

Tools for navigating complexity, Cards catalyzing stories, Conversations that mind and matter, Digital communities and collaborative narratives

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