Participatory Inquiry, episode 12: Glow
“In a network, in transition, after being brought low; glow.”
@johnkellden
In your rediscovering yourself, if you tilt your head just a little and look just so, if you then start to see things as if for the first time — and in your looking, seeing, you remember being always and already a uniquely beautiful shard of a long gone supernova — you and things will begin to glow.
“There are two kinds of light — the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.”
— James Thurber
Beautiful Beyond Belief
I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I’m sure I heard his echo
In my baby’s new born tears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years
— Mike And The Mechanics
The glow. The glow is what brings aliveness to what you extend. Extending your story, that rekindles the embers in others, gathering around makeshift campfires, until rediscovering ecology, rediscovering eudaimonia, breaking camp when aligning around economy of extending ourselves, in service to seven generations to come.
In a network, synthesis, selfhood, service.
Digital identity is your ability to extend a select part of your essential character and social sense of self — online.
We made it? What happened? We happened.
You know what just happened? Humanity. Humanity happened. Such a miracle, right, that such a small thing like this little Covid-19 thing, this virus, Bat out of Hubei, would bring that?
And, just like that, a revealing light, shining on precisely the best of times and the worst of times, the rising to the challenge, countless nameless heroes making a difference, literally saving all our lives.
And, just like that, a revealing light, shining on all the Alfrid Lickspittles of the world, who suddenly went hiding “Out of an Abundance of Caution”.
And, just like that, conversations that mind and matter, a local and global weaving of inquiry, how to meet any which contingency, in ways bringing forth both our own innate essential character as well as shaping joint futures, after the much needed Oxygen, after the much needed rediscovery of our elders and our sick and all our other fellow humans in need.
And, just like that, we are now finding ourselves on a planet, where we are to steward a world which we would be proud to hand over to Greta Thunberg and one billion other young human beings, for them to carry forward, seven generations to come.
And, just like that. You and me. Making a difference, wherever we happen to find each other. Many blessings on your path, regardless what Gods are yours to invite along your continued journey.
Understanding: Cards You Are Dealt
Understanding Digital Identity
As a generative sequence:
1. Digital platform, turned place, turned playground, turned Ba.
2. Digital technologies, social collective intelligence and language use.
3. Digital structures, processes and flows: digital behavior.
4. Digital becoming: individual intelligence, individual ability, networked agency and win^n purposes.
5. Digital agency: review, story, tasks, social learning.
Glow is what brings warmth to data
There’s a third dimension to Engagement and Return On Engagement:
Knowledge. Knowledge. Let’s start with data…
Warm Data
Nora Bateson:
“In order to interface with any a complex system without disrupting the circuitry of the interdependencies that give it its integrity we must look at the spread of relationships that make the system robust. Using only analysis of statistical data will offer conclusions that can point to actions that are out of sync with the complexity of the situation. Information without interrelationality is likely to lead us toward actions that are misinformed, thereby creating further destructive patterns.”
Andrei Tarkovsky:
“Throughout the entire sequence, all in long and medium shots,
nothing can be heard but the uninterrupted sound of the water — no
footsteps, no rustle of clothes, none of the words exchanged by the
people on the bank. That is the way sound is made expressive in this
sequence, that is how he uses it.
Above all, I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in
themselves that if only we could learn to listen to them properly,
cinema would have no need of music at all.”
The sounds of our world, guiding our viewing life anew
As a generative sequence:
- dissonance (the world is imperfect, and that is why art)
- reflection
- resilience
- reach (quite often, a small, different move will do)
- resonance
Nora Bateson:
“The pull of our old thinking in terms of parts and wholes is difficult to move away from. However the vistas from which we can begin to view life anew with these concepts reveal possibilities of richer inquiry.”
Andrei Tarkovsky:
“We wanted the sound to be close to that of an earthly echo, filled
with poetic suggestion — to rustling, to sighing. The notes had to
convey the fact that reality is conditional, and at the same time
accurately to reproduce precise states of mind, the sounds of a
person’s interior world.”
Stir slumbering sense
“A story must be judged according to whether it makes sense. And ‘making sense’ must be here understood in its most direct meaning: to make sense is to enliven the senses. A story that makes sense is one that stirs the senses from their slumber, one that opens the eyes and the ears to their real surroundings, tuning the tongue to the actual tastes in the air and sending chills of recognition along the surface of the skin. To make sense is to release the body from the constraints imposed by outworn ways of speaking, and hence to renew and rejuvenate one’s felt awareness of the world. It is to make the senses wake up to where they are.”
― David Abram
At the very next moment, remaining low — you let go of what they told you was there, turn your moment into story and gift others.
Quinta Essentia
Here, go do. Go figure out together with a few others, who you are and what select, unique part of our 21C Transition path, is yours to create and offer, in service to purpose, people and planet.
1. Attention turned situational awareness. Divest from denial.
2. Will turned flow. Listen to Stephen Hawking.
3. Intelligence turned ability. Understand Alfred North Whitehead.
4. Behavior turned agency, agency turned aliveness. Grok David Abram.
Quinta Essentia
5. The path is made by joint win^n walking. Learning how to play outrageously, impeccably well, together with others and with the planet you are always and already called to steward, in service to Greta Thunberg and one billion other children, seven generations to come.
Participatory Inquiry, episode 12: Glow
