Fluidity
A recap and a frame to help orient communities of practice.
My curiosity towards scene building continued with a trip to Detroit for Fluidity Forum, a gathering about metamodernity, sense-making, rationalist, metarationalism, and/or thinking-about-thinking, for bloggers, their readers, and enthusiasts. I was among 30 participants and everyone was required to contribute some kind of offering to the conference. The format allowed for some unique, creative forms of participation varying from lectures to physical workshops to home baked goods. It was very ripe for an unconference because you can have events that take on a lecture format while others took on a discussion type setting. It was ultimately up to the participant how they wanted to shape the experience and most, if not all, were on board. Plus, it’s not every weekend you get to waltz, participate in a singing jam, listen and discuss metarationality and relevance realization. What also stood out to me was that there was very little parasociality. In contrast to most conventions that feature a speaker or two that grabs the attention of most of the attendees, there wasn't a single individual at Fluidity Forum who was the centre of it all. Big names attract people, but not for me because I prefer getting to know anyone in my vicinity. I truly believe there's a world of talent out there that's being missed because plenty of people are focused on the big names and that's quite unfortunate.
Fluidity Forum was a place where upstart bloggers, thinkers, and performers could find one another and share their findings and observations with great depth and earnestness. Definitely had a high openness, playful vibe. I also got to meet a person I've had the joy of getting to know and having long conversations on Zoom within the past three years for the first time in person. He was every bit as thoughtful and optimistic from what I observed being online with him. Plus, it was a sight to behold how he was able to integrate some of the insights we had over Zoom. It is truly rewarding to see someone step into responsibility and grow over time.
If you've been to any gatherings with people that started as online friends, offer a reply here or on Twitter, detailing what it was about and what it was like.
What I'm Watching:
What's Important NAV w/Daniel Schmachtenberger, Nora Bateson, and Nate Hagens
“How do we meet chaos together? With as much love, care, and grace, and creativity and improvisation as possible?” - Nora Bateson
A few things stood out to me:
-Nora talking about “agency to nth order action” (22:30).
-Nate finding hope in doing the most meaningful work possible (1:22:45)
-and Daniel's line about imagining a world with people with the heart of Jane Goodall learning to do Kissingerian stuff (2:04:18) + Nate's line about “Using the devil's tools for Gaia's work”.
Plenty of ideas to feast on, but the one that interested me about most has to do with nth order. What is it meant by nth order? Nth order refers to events greater than first order. We can also refer to them as events that ripple and cascade into areas outside of intended consequences. The main example that Daniel, Nora, Tristan, and others use is social media. The designers' main intent behind social media was to simply bring friends and family together, but they could have never expected mental health crises, outrage-based addiction, foreign influence tampering, cultural fragmentation, etc. The last thing the designers would have wanted was an internet battleground, but they failed to consider the nth order effects that arose out of market and state interactions. In contrast, agency that operates in the nth order could see that media interacts with economics, politics, behavioral psychology, and more. A collective that truly operates in nth order action could see how their work interacts with many other domains. They wouldn't be obsessed with optimizing for a single metric, but instead have multiple considerations. This does not mean one's work has to take everything into account (because that would be impractical), but it should be oriented to expect a variety of consequences.
The question of “What would it look like for communities, organizations, and collectives to operate with agency to nth order action?” is worth exploring. Nora's questions of “How do we learn together?” and “How do we meet chaos together?” can help in orienting these collectives towards thinking about nth order and acting with nth order in mind. This is quite different than organizations geared towards a single issue, such as removing CO2 from the atmosphere for example. What's also noticeable about single issue organizations is that they feel highly certain about their sense of the problem space. To go back to our carbon removal organization example, an organization that aims to remove CO2 operates on the logic that our environmental crises can be reduced to too much CO2 emissions. In contrast, collectives operating with agency to nth order action would have a wider, more encompassing view of what is happening in the world and be willing to update that view over time. Not every organization has to be a complexity thinktank, but they could have the ability to operate with complexity. I think a big enabler of agency to nth order action is making leaders reflect on the vision of their companies.
Questions to ponder about vision:
-Does their vision operate on a narrow, reductionistic view about the world?
-Will they produce negative externalities even if they succeed?
-Can they coordinate with other organizations to tackle problems that require collective action?
I am sure there are leaders out there who think this way, but now they just have to make this transparent to their collaborators and with the wider public. Because after all, we can't solve our problems with the same thinking that created them...
On Agency
Agency and “being agentic” is often discussed in our communities, but I want to take the time to establish what these words mean for me and how it relates to responding in the nth order. The simplest way I think about agency is the capacity to play the game of power. I think it is one thing to win at the game of power and maintain the status quo, but it is another to win at the game of power and shift the status quo. I'd make the argument that the former is not agentic because they are still beholden to the operation of the status quo. The real agency is the ability to shift institutions, a sentiment shared by Samo Burja in his piece on live players. But that also sounds incomplete because many problems of the world were caused by agentic beings that acted for personal gain. What we need are people who are agentic and are in favour of stewarding the commons and all living things; people like MLK or Gandhi come to mind here, which is to say that the kind of agentic ideal we want to see in the world has already existed / there is a precedent for it. And the thing about figures like MLK or Gandhi is that they challenged existing forms of power and did so through nonviolence. And while you can take a look at our current protests and lament how little is being done, the orientation towards a noble ideal that exists beyond one's self interest need not be overlooked. Going beyond self-interest by instead serving the commons and all living things is to check selfish pursuits of power that are deployed for personal gain. Sometimes I also think playing the game of power is a cerebral way of living; why not learn how to dance with power instead?
We need forms of emergent order that can outcompete powerful individuals to navigate the uncertainty of the 21st century and respond to our biggest collective action problems. We cannot just assume that all of the rich and the powerful automatically have everyone's best interests at heart. When I think about where we are in this moment in time, I think of E.O Wilson's quote, “We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology”. It is essential to upgrade the first two to achieve collective flourishing. And my greatest guess is that this task is currently being tackled within various communities and projects around the world and throughout the Noosphere, existing in both physical and digital forms...
What I'm reading:
Lone Wolf, Letting Go by Rob Hardy
While I'm interested in systemic approaches to navigating the uncertain, I still recognize and highly value the importance of personal approaches as well. I find Rob Hardy's writing to be some of the most endearing stuff I've read on This Part of Twitter. I'm also a fellow admirer of Rilke's “living the questions” because it's such a delightful contrast to “I want something ambitious and I'm going to be patient enough to work at it until I achieve it”. Questions enable you to be flexible and adaptable with the constant that is change. Plus, it's wonderful to see another human being embody Rilke.
Upcoming Events in Toronto for October:
**Keep checking this article for new additions coming this month**
Oct 5 and 8th: Holy Gasp
Oct 11-13: CANSEE Conference @ York University
-> Oct 12 @ 3:30pm : Transformational Social Learning Discussion: What's The Story? , Future Economy W/ Jim Jones
A session hosted by Jim Jones to help make sense of ecological economic research approaches through participatory narrative inquiry to inform others of what is possible.
Oct 12-14: RSD12: Toronto Symposium (in partnership with CANSEE) @ OCAD U
Oct 14: Intro to Shadow Work
Oct 14: Connection Lab @ Annette Studios (7pm)
Oct 15: Forest Bathing @ Evergreen Brickworks
Oct 16: Trampoline Hall @ The Garrison (tickets to be released on the Thursday prior)
Oct 18 up to the 29th: Dead Parents Society: A Dark Sketch Comedy
Oct 27: ROM After Dark: Trick or Treat
Oct 28: Karaoke Halloween Edition @ Danu Social House
Oct 29: Sacred Relating, Emerging Technologies, and the Spiritual Path
Suggestions always appreciated
I am sharing your article in my NOT GAME A crew at Emergent Commons.