https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=FhJV2Fpbovo
Hello everyone, welcome to Voices with Raveki. I’m here again for the second time with Hader Hallett and he and I are going to discuss a very important issue that I think is deeply relevant to this idea of stealing the culture of trying to build an alternative way of being for human beings that addresses the meaning crisis, homes and ecology of practices might be the cultural base for the religion that’s not a religion, et cetera. Very grandiose things we’re saying right now, but nevertheless that’s sort of the nexus of what we want to talk about. So welcome, Tyler. Thank you, John. And as I just said before to you, it’s really good to be here and I really appreciate your time. I think our hope that what comes of our conversation will be useful if not to us, to other people that can listen in on it and that some collective and group effort will be able to produce some insights that we can all feed back into each other. At least that’s definitely something that I’ve received from you on numerous occasions and lots of people on this little corner of the internet. Yeah, Isabella King’s notion for it I think is really wonderful. Sure, sure. There’s certainly a notion of community that evokes and one that I feel. Yeah. I’m moving around lots of different, you know, collective groups like diverse and strange groups and I think there’s a, despite the diversity and the strangeness of us all, there is a sense of doing something together and appreciating some element of what we’re going through together and a certain part of culture that’s emerging from it. So yeah, that’s really what I’m very interested in talking about today is how this is starting to unfold, how it is, what it is we’re actually looking for as we gather together to do this. Like why the hell are we spending all this time doing this? What do we feel is missing? And then as we’re going through this process, what’s the set of relationships that are occurring naturally as they’re unfolding and what’s being produced by each of those sets of relationships? And I thought that your work in particular in the way that you have such keen insight on how it is that our cognition functions and what it’s important processes of like zooming in and zooming out and understanding of different layers of insight, I think, and wisdom. I think this, I hope that we can discuss maybe an understanding of how these patterns unfold and maybe how we can utilize them in group cognitive efforts. And I’m going to be working soon with Tim Adelin and some others on ephemeral group work. And I think that maybe is also something we can discuss. Yeah, I’d love to. I love everything that Tim is doing, always. Always count me in as interested in that. So Christopher and I are in the middle, more than the middle now, I can happily say. We’ve been working on an anthology that’s got many of these people from this part of the internet, including Sevilla King, who named it, thusly. And it’s called Internotar Dialogues. And it’s about trying to understand the dialogical process, how it’s working in distributed cognition, how we can create new psychotechnologies. My project with Chris of trying to sort of reinvent your dialectic as a practice for engaging dialogues. But all of this, many of the usual suspects are appearing in that anthology. So yeah, there’s a lot of thought going in right now to, you spoke a moment ago, just before we started the recording, about, you know, sort of the software aspect of it, the culture and the cultural cognitive aspects of what seems to be emerging. I agree with you, the technology is already there, or mostly there. I think it still needs to be improved to reduce some of the cognitive load issues. But yeah, I agree with you. The interesting thing to be talking about right now, I mean, this sounds sort of silly to say, but what is happening? What is happening at the cultural cognitive level? And you said you’ve had some sort of insights and realizations about what is drawing people into this space, some of the commonalities they might have, some of the shared visions they might have. So what is drawing people into this space? And what’s keeping them in this space? And what are their shared hopes about this space? What do you think about that? That’s a great question. Thank you. Like in examining anything, my mind is always drawn to this natural process whereby I consider a thing and its history and I project into the future as well. Right. Excellent. It happens, like it just clinging to a thing and like, ah-ha, it came from somewhere. Where did it come from? And then like, what is it going to be doing? And I think, yeah, this is a really big portion of what the brain is doing, right? Like it’s very, it’s trying to understand the environment. But yeah, yeah. So trying to get to know what it is that brought us here. It’s a big part of what we’re doing, in fact, talking to each other about our histories. Yes. And then in the sharing of that, we see these commonalities. We’re like ants smelling the pheromone trail kind of, right? That smells very familiar. I’ve been on that track, right? And we get a sense, I think, of, all right, so we all arrived in the same spot. And you can kind of, you know, think of it as like pilgrims are going on a journey and you’ve all gathered in this one location. You kind of look around, you’re like, well, what brought us here? And where do we come from? And I think- Sorry for interrupting, Todd. I really love the analogy. Please continue. I love that analogy. Please keep going. Well, it’s like an oasis too. Each of these spots are like oases. And because that really is part of the meaning crisis and the domicile aspect of it, right? It’s like going out into the world is being presented with a harsh desert, right? There’s no sustenance there from which we drink. And so I think that to just jump ahead and answer, that’s really what most of us are looking for, is that level of sustenance. There’s a, you know, it’s a thirst for which there is no clear organ by which we imbibe, right? It’s like this coordinated orchestrated thing of getting to know and cherish and love your networked group of people. It’s just getting to know your neighbor and understand what a neighbor really is, let’s say. And yeah, so that is part of like, so with nothing much to do but speak with each other, right? You end up talking about these histories and getting to understand how common these certain themes are in experiencing trauma or experiencing certain kinds of impositions in life that require us to, you know, necessity is the mother of invention, right? It’s like requires us to summon forth either the strength or the ingenuity or natural talent or all of that combined to overcome. And in the overcoming, we acquire a certain skill and a maturation of thought with this process of insight. And I think that’s why we all kind of find ourselves in these certain places talking about similar things, looking for similar answers. Yeah, so, and that’s part of the self-selecting process, by the way, that’s getting moving in towards like, a deeper question of what it is we’re doing here, which is like, now that we’re here, what do we do? Like, now that you’re at the Oasis, do you build a little tent structure? Is it like, do you erect like an ephemeral little city? Is it something that you found a new civilization upon? Is like, is this that is enough water there? Can you build it up into something big? It doesn’t seem so yet, right? Like, it seems like we’re definitely lacking a lot of the infrastructure that you would need for something like a city. But I want to not belabor that metaphor too much, because I actually despise cities in many ways. So yeah, I’m not really looking to recreate that necessarily. Yeah, there’s, yeah, so that’s, yes, we are here looking for that which we most appreciate, which is being known, being recognized for what it is that we’ve done and experienced and overcome, and seeing that in others, right? And that’s the, that is the process of inspiration, which acts as a kind of resource that we’re missing. So yeah, you’re all about the insight and wisdom and inspiration, and that’s so much of what we need now in the presence of misinformation, and like, like, willful, like culpable misleading of people. Yes. Immigrogri, like all this crazy stuff happening right now, which is, yeah, yeah, anyhow, I don’t want to get too political. But yeah, there’s, there’s so much of that which is mitigated, or even swept aside entirely, when you get to know the person that you’re being civil with, right, that you’re building civilization with. Right. And that’s what we’re missing, really, that is what, that is what the domizide is, is that lack of connection, lack of feeling at home. So I’m really curious about how to, how to build that feeling, right, in a very rapid way, right? Where whereby you can travel amongst a diverse range of people and feel at home, right, and to be in the presence of others who also feel the same. So there was a reciprocal nature there that lends itself to a, to the opening process, to that reciprocal opening. And that’s, that’s such an important element, it seems, of navigating novel situations, and especially like, like rapid novelty, which is exactly what we’re in, the circumstance where it’s a lot of chaos and complicated situations, and all of that requires a certain kind of Zen openness, like, right, like being receptive to the jazzy impromptu nature of what it is to respond with it with adaptive capacity and the optimum grip, right? Yeah. So yeah, that’s one of the things about, and that’s, that’s what I think we’re doing here. That’s what I’m doing here. That was beautifully said, Todd. That’s why I just wanted to let you keep going, keep talking. So you, it’s, it’s like, people have been traumatized and starved to various degrees by the meeting crisis and other crises that are related to it. I’m just trying to make sure I understand. And so they’re drawn, I like your sort of intuitively, and that, right, and they start to be drawn together into a place where they can talk about that, but also talk in a way that starts to alleviate that. Have I understood you correctly? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve felt it alleviated in myself, at least, and I know I can speak to a certain smaller group that I’m in direct contact with, and I can speak direct before and say there’s some alleviation there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that’s the feedback I’m getting generally. And I was at, it’ll, it’ll come out soon. I was, two weeks ago, I spoke at the movement summit that was put together by Ray Kelly. And I was just, I was impressed, almost overwhelmed by the number of people, and I’ve entered into a bunch of this ongoing discussions, like with Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick Wilkerman, I believe is his last name, with a bunch of people. But the, the, the, the, the, the power, the quality, the sophistication of the thinking, but how much it was matched by the power, the quality, the sophistication of the practice, and how that was in turn, both of those were home within all these emerging communities that are networking together. Like there is a lot happening out there right now. And, and this, this part of it, this meeting together virtually is part of what, whatever this is that’s happening. I mean, I, you know, I obviously, I think it’s people are responding to the meeting crisis by coming up with ecologies of practices, ecologies of practices, and at least a subculture by which they’re trying to, you know, coordinate these ecologies and practices and curate them to improve religio. That’s, that’s all happening. And it’s happening. Like when I started this project in, geez, it was like this, you know, not that more than like a year and a half ago, you know, and I didn’t know any of you guys, any of these people. And I was, I was, you know, I was mostly pessimistic. And I mean, there’s a lot that’s happening that’s very chaotic and very dangerous, like you said right now. But the fact that, you know, this corner of the internet is taking shape and there’s other, and it’s, you know, and there’s other related corners and that this corner of the internet is just a corner of a bunch of communities that are also springing up and they’re, and they’re all wanting to talk to each other. They’re all wanting to, and it’s not a competitive talking. It’s an edification. They want to edify and beautify each other and help each other. I mean, I’m not, I don’t, I’m not going to break into a song by the Beatles right now or anything like that, but, but there, there was, yes. So there was a lot, there was a, there’s a lot happening right now that really exemplifies what you’re talking about. There’s this huge drawing together. People are finding themselves and it’s being accelerated by this technology. And, and, and they’re not just finding themselves, they’re finding alleviation and amelioration and also inspiration and aspiration. And then, and then your question I think becomes the pertinent question. It’s, it’s the exact right question to ask is, well, what should I do? What should I do to help this? And I think that that’s, that’s the question. That’s the question that immediately comes to mind. Right. And that’s spread across a whole range of people. Yes. Yes. What’s really interesting about this, like in my younger days, I saw the world quite differently, right? I’m still kind of full with the fire and vigor of youth, let’s say, but, but there’s definitely a different texture to it. There’s an impetuousness to youth, right? There’s a rushing headlong into it that I’ve definitely noticed a decline in and the way that I see the world, because of that change, that alteration, right? Like it, it’s apparent in the way that I speak, the kinds of things that I will agree to my opinions, all that is expressed in just this more care, right? Yeah. I have children, like I watched the headlong nature of youth, right? Like my whole responsibility, it seems to teach them care. It’s such an interesting way to think about it too, because it helps save me from the desire to, you know, reach out and like terrible frustration, because there’s something, I’ve really struggled with this too, as a father, because I didn’t think I’d ever have like these moments of frustration and difficulty. I don’t know if I was speaking like roses, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it has something to do with the care for life. There’s a haphazardness to what it is to be a babe and a toddler. And, and it’s so fascinating because it is both, it’s like simultaneously this over effusive joy for life. Yeah. It’s in that joy, you’re, you’re completely missing all of the terrible, unfortunate, right? You’re, you’re actually, in fact, the more bumbling you are, the more joyful you are, the more care needs to be taken by the people around you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that, that reciprocal process turns them to each other in a sense, right? So, and, and then I think if it’s done properly, it acts as a resource that feeds into, you get a closed loop, you get like a closed economy, right? So, and, and this is what’s, this is what’s being broken by much of the modern era, I think, you can, you can define it this way. What was once a kind of closed loop economy, a marketplace of these like inner space resources of, of human social networks, they’re, they’re being siphoned by all of these other attentive efforts in the world. And, and that, that is just, it’s kind of fracturing the, the whole, it’s, it’s given lending fragility to the whole structure that exists upon, you know, that ecosystem before. Anyhow, yeah. So the, the keen insight that, that I seem to have like fixated upon is something like our own experiences in life conform us to something, some shape. And then we see the world according to that shape. Yes. And then that gives us, it affords us some set of skills and capacities or opportunities that, that works to a certain extent, right? In a certain regard, like in a certain moment, in a certain situation. It’s best to be as adaptable as you can, but as you age in life, you acquire a fixedness, but also an expertise. I think at that simultaneous narrowing and vertical. Yeah. So, yeah. So, but, but all right. So you, if you take a real like high level view of this, it seems like there are these kind of archetypal relationships that people narrow into an expertise land and that if you assemble, so if you think of the sage, if you think of, yeah, think of the sage or the Buddha or any, it’s always described as a path, which leads to the expression of this nature, right? This certain kind of nature. And it’s a set of characteristics and virtues. So each of us being a fractal of that possibility, that potential diminished in capacity, let’s say, or acquiring numerous corruption, corruptions and being weak. If we somehow configure ourselves together into a synergistic whole, we can reproduce that sage in part, right? That’s my sense of it. Yes. And that’s what, that’s what actually represents the good dialogos. Yes. When that full figure is met, by the total group. Yep. Right. It’s that, that’s the expressive, like ineffable aspect of what can’t be grasped is that thing, which is outside of you all. And yeah, that’s so, yeah, that’s my sense of it. Sorry. I’m kind of. No, no, no, that’s excellent. I mean, that’s, I mentioned, you know, the anthology, that’s, that’s an idea that’s coming out in the anthology, this idea of, you know, the third factor, the logos, the guys that comes into distributed cognition, and is actually perhaps a better model for the sage than, than, than one, than an individual. That this is very convergent with a lot of emerging cognitive science, Greg, Enriquez, in his work, and then Mercer and Sperber on their work, and the idea that cognition is usually and should mostly be done in distributed cognition, excuse me, distributed cognition, that human cognition evolved to work largely dialogically. So to make, to give a concrete example, monologic reason tends to be beset by all kinds of bias. But when people enter into distributed cognition, and they’re willing to give their allegiance to the overarching process of opponent processing, rather than, you know, adversarial processing, and they will typically do much better at reasoning and problem solving than individuals. Now groups have their problems too, you have group think, you have the fusion of responsibility. So like you said, you have to do something on the software, you have to build the right culture so that you get the best out of the distributed cognition. But here’s how I put it, the best of distributed cognition is much better than the very best of monologic cognition. Right. And so, and so we should always compare apples to apples, don’t, you know, right. Well, okay, but there’s something interesting about this, because, go ahead. Oh, sorry, no, no, don’t interrupt. Yeah, I can hold the thought. Yeah. Okay, so please hold your thought. Well, all I wanted to say is that, but we don’t have to choose between them. We can, and this is what you see in the Platonic and the Socratic ideals of dialogos, the individual cultivation of wisdom and the collective cultivation of wisdom, right, can actually be put into sync with each other. So they mutually reinforce and facilitate each other. Right. Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s the best for the presentation. And then what happens is you sort of, the distributed cognition gives you one of the better symbols for the sage, but the individual practices, right, obviously facilitate the distributed cognition, but they also allow individuals to more appropriately and effectively internalize that sage within their own individual cognition. Right. Yeah. You can’t help but become more like that thing. Yes. And that calls you out. Right. And that is distributed, this multi-perspectival thing, right. Exactly. And you’re never, you’re never getting fixed and you’re always adaptive. And, okay, but the other, the other element of that though is something like people seem to be more inspired by the, by the singular, like, you know, even the, even your language there, the Platonic, the Socratic, like we refer to like the, the source of inspiration and that usually seems to in here within or adhere to a character, right. Yeah. Christ. But then, you know, even with Christ, what did he do? What is his, his process? Assemble a group of 12. Yeah. Right. And then those two, those 12, I think was the 72 and then, and then that was supposed to ripple outwards. And then the church itself, the Ecclesia itself. Right. Right. The body becomes the body, right. For the Buddha, it’s the Sangha and for the Socratic tradition, it’s the Platonic Academy takes, takes shape around it. Right. Yeah. And all of those things are reaching towards like the same set of, you know, transjective relationships, right. Like the, that the same set of goals, right. Which is something like to reverence and uphold the process itself and the people that are having that process under go. Yeah. I think, I think that’s well said. I’ve made part of the problem. If we do again, how did we get here? Part of the problem might be to some degree, you know, a Protestant individualism that has tended to re situate history that way and sort of glom onto individuals. It’s also sort of narratively, heuristically useful. It simplifies things. Sure. I’m thinking about, right, you know, the, the Catholic or perhaps even better, the Eastern Orthodox versions where, you know, first of all, you have a Trinity, you know, and then it, right. And then you have the saints and then you have the church and you’re supposed to see the whole thing, right. Christ is at the center, but Christ is not the soul, right. Christ is married to the church, for example, the church is his body, right. There’s what you’re supposed to see a deep, a deep co-identification between the representation of the wise individual and the wise, the wise body. You’re supposed to see them as deeply belonging together. Supposed to be broken into pieces and decentralized and distributed. Yeah. Right. Like that’s the notion that that’s, I think that’s what the whole sacramental notion was supposed to teach. If I’m, if I’m more of a mistaken. Well, the idea is you’re supposed to, it’s what you, the sacrament is you, yeah, the idea is you break it up and you distribute it. So that’s the differentiation because you’re right. But then everybody does it together, which is then the communitats, the drawing together. Right. So the idea is you reach out in differentiation to meet people where they are, right. But then you’re supposed to draw them together so that they can afford, right. That third factor, right. The logos. Yeah. You know, we were just discussing this the other day, my fiance and I, this over adherence to a heroic narrative. Yeah. Which is, which is definitely tied in with the kind of over messianic notion and the over Protestant work ethic kind of individualistic notion. It’s all in there with the kind of American dream ideal. It’s all baked into that when I was growing up. And yeah, it’s really, it’s like, it’s skewed the media a lot. Even the way that we interpret other structures, it starts to be through the filter of like, is it heroic or not? Or is it, you know, just look at the way that we revere any of the celebrities now, even in the tech industry, like Elon Musk. I mean, there’s a million messianic figures that are supposed to offer some kind of, you know, method of salvation of some kind, you know, wealth and prosperity for us all. And yeah, there’s something to that. There’s a quote that often echoes in my mind from Emerson, which is an essay or maybe a lecture he gave on the American philosophers. Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by virtue of over influence. There’s something that like, that overly attractive element of something that it fixates attention, right? It causes people to lose some element of their vitality in trade to like their attention to that thing. Yeah, at least I’ve noticed that happens so often, right? And it becomes this tawdry connection, right? That’s not of any real value. And there are these cheap tokens of attention that are sought after. It doesn’t seem to integrate well with the other modes of being. And it seems to sap and narrow, right? That reciprocal narrowing kind of addictive process. Yeah, I think that is all baked up in that. And there is something more important to the notion of like a Piagetian equilibration thing, where you’re working inwards and outwards. Yep. And it’s deeply tied into knowing that you’re tied into all of that, right? And that your strength is only really defined by like how well that extends. So, Tillich actually saw this, ironically enough, he’s a Protestant theologian, but he’s in many ways considered one of the last theologians, because he proposed the God beyond the God of theism. I don’t mean historically the last, I mean sort of conceptually along a particular line of conceptual development. But Tillich proposed that the challenge facing of religion, he was speaking specifically about Christianity though, is how to balance the tonos, the creative tension, the opponent processing between the irremovable, but in some sense not finally reconcilable, right? The poles of individuation and participation. Yeah. And one way in which people try to solve this, and I’m putting that in scare quotes, I think is they try to collapse participation into a particular individual. And then they just assimilate their own individuation, they project their own individuality. Yeah, exactly. And so they actually abandon the project of individuation in the projection, but they also, correspondingly without realizing it, they abandon most of what is available to them in participation. Right. As the participation degenerates, as you said, to, I think you called it something like sort of, you know, superficial tokens of attention. It’s just a kind of basic connectedness to the figure that’s supposed to be sufficient. And that’s not what participation means. Participation means what we were talking about earlier, that you and I can together get to a place where we individually can’t get to on our own. Right. That’s the participation phenomenon. And it draws you forth further and more, right? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And there’s a sense in which they need each other. This is Pellett’s point, the individuation and the participation. And one of the things I see the Dialogos project is trying to give prominence to is exactly that fact that we’ve got to enter into a way of talking to each other that is getting us to call up the first person perspective of individuation and the third person perspective of participation within the second person perspective of the shared we. Right. That’s really well said. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that’s really well said because that closes the loop on all of it. And that’s what you need. Yes, I think so. Yeah. Right. You need each feedback into the other. I’m trying to draw from these models, the models of the Ecclesia, the church, the Sangha, but also the academy. I’m trying these various models of how people have tried, because I don’t think there’s any final solution to this, but trying to get sort of what are some overall features that will allow us to understand better how these communities form when they form well. And what does that look like? As a way of trying to answer your question about like, how do we go forward? I’m reading a really good book by Foller right now on what’s it called spiritual midwifery. It’s about, and he actually uses the word dialogos, which I keep, I’ve never met the guy. He’s never met me. It’s just really cool. But he’s actually, what he’s doing is he’s running in his book, a dialogue between the midwifery you see in Jesus and the midwifery you see in Socrates. And he’s doing that thing. He’s trying to get these two, these two dialogical figures also to talk to each other. And he’s trying to get at, okay, what does this look like? How do we help? How do we work together to give birth to each other and also, right, to a home in which what we give birth to can properly come to fruition? Well, and anyone who’s been at a birth at the moment of it and heard the cry and felt the presence of all that deep sigh, right? Like everyone in the room just, oh, yeah. And then whatever is remained is just filled with a flood of oxytocin or whatever cocktail it is in there, but you’re just, you’re suffused with a deep appreciation for the miracle of life. And that is an element that needs to be conveyed, I think. It needs to be refreshed from time to time, else we lose, we lose one of those most well-orchestrated moments of life, right? Like if we think of like all of the energy and time and effort went into that moment, it makes sense to me that it would be this evocative kind of dramatic thing that has all this, has such qualia to it, right? It has such a texture and experience, such a richness. And so many of our representations in life miss this entirely. Our conversations don’t lead towards a birthing of joy and appreciation for life. They’re far more adversarial, most of them. Yeah, which is unfortunate. I mean, so the birthing, I mean, Socrates is the midwife, and Jesus says, you know, you must be born again. Yeah. Right. And it, but you know, not as an individual, what it’s, I think it’s tended to become in various versions of American Protestantism, which is this individualistic emotional experience. What Jesus was talking about is you must be born again into the kingdom of God, right? Which is, right, which is again, what we’re talking about here. And we’ve forgotten the deep connection between concept, concept, conceptualization and conception, right? That we should keep, we shouldn’t have lost that connection. We are so, we become so beset by our fixation on our concepts that we forget the deeper processes that involved, that give birth to conceptualizers, right? We’ve forgotten that. And so I, I, what I want to know though, I guess, is what, because, because you alluded to this, and I think my Jordan Hall is just bang on about this, right? All of these historical analogies are important. I treat them with respect. To use your verb, and I’ve talked about this too, I care about them. I care about them deeply, and I’m careful with them. And it’s, you know, it’s a respectful care. But, you know, I’ve been talking with Andrew Sweeney and Chris, you know, Master Pietro about this notion, this Latin term inventio, which means both to make, right, and to discover. Because Jordan Hall’s point is, while all these historical examples are needed, we need reinventio because we’re in a state of accelerating change. So it’s not only that things are getting complex, they’re getting complex in how they’re getting complex, right? It’s a recursive kind of complexification. Not only is that the case, but that is in the face of a set of extinction threats that are also accelerating in their influence and their pervasiveness. You know, it’s no coincidence that we had COVID. I’ve listened to a couple right now scientific talks by, you know, epidemiologists, biologists are saying, look, we’re going to have more of these because the factors that drove this, we’re only increasing them. We’re messing up, you know, ocean currents, air streams, you know, melting the permafrost, cutting down the rainforest, and we’re stressing human beings out, we’re compacting them into ever increasingly dense cities. There’s all this stuff, and none of that’s changing, none of that’s going away. And so all of that said, you know, both the complexifying complexification that Jordan Hall talks about, and then the acceleration of the extinction threats means that for all of their cherished value, and I’m not speaking, you know, I’m not speaking, you know, facetiously here, I mean it for all the cherished value of these historical analogies. There also has to be something above and beyond them. They seem inadequate, right? Yes, they’re inadequate. They’re helpful. They’re helpful and they’re instructive, but they’re inadequate. We need an inventio. We need a reinventio of what we need right now. And so what is it, sorry, and you don’t have to answer this. This is an open question for discuss. What is it we need now? Like what is it we need? What has to be different than before that will give us what we need to exact all of this wonderful machinery, and I use it in quotation marks that we’re talking about here, such that it is adaptively appropriate to what is happening right now. Yeah, so like I strongly feel that we’re close. Let me say that. I love Jordan’s language and his work in particular introduced me to notions of the difference between chaos and complexity and all that. Yeah, so like you can see where the generator functions spin off into turbulence, right? We can, like you and I can look out and see in the world where it’s happening now. And we’re in these little islands of stability still, but nevertheless, it’s certainly seems to be the case that the underlying structures are susceptible to these turbulent effects too. And yeah, so that like, even if you’re not presently aware of the fragility of this whole system, it seems quite apparent that there are a number of ways in which it could all collapse very quickly, suddenly, and almost completely. And it’s just due to the structure of the way that we’ve built a lot of these relationships in the world. And I mean, just look into Daniel Schmockenberger’s work, I think, like the existential threats or whatever this new language Ernie says it. Extinction threats. Yeah, that’s ever present. And okay, so can we say that it’s something that we will know when we see it? Well, I wanted to make sure first of all, before I answer that, that I understand you clearly. You have a sense that it’s close. Did you mean that the extinction threats are close? Our coherence. Yeah, I’m sorry, perhaps it was not clear there. And see, there’s the clarification process, which just occurs rapidly. And if I could just compare this in real time with so many other communications I’ve had with people and how they fail miserably. Yeah, sorry. But yeah, there is some inter, okay, so let’s say on the landscape, everything currently exists, which we need to solve the problem. It’s all present. It’s not coordinated. It is not arranged in its strategic and not final implementation, but, you know, utilizable, let’s say like it’s actually anyhow, so the question is, will we recognize it when we see it when this coherence occurs? And what the answer is yes, then what is the character that with that feeling inside? Forget about what it is that, you know, if we just do the analysis in the internal instead of the external, let’s assume x, right? So internally, what would that look like? Right. Right. And maybe that will give us a clue as to what the external configuration would look like, because there’s always a kind of inversion of relationships there. Well, I think it’s got to do what we talked about. I mean, it’s got to do that bridging between the first person, the third person into the second person perspective. It’s got to be doing that. It’s got to be giving people, you know, a sense of, you know, the transcendence into the moreness and the imminence of the suchness. It’s got to be doing, you know, the furthest reaches of human phenomenology. It’s got to be doing that. It’s got to give it’s got to be giving people reliable, and I mean, systematically, systemically, both reliable, amelioration of, you know, patterns of self-deceptive, self-destructive behavior, and enhancing all of the connections, connections to themselves, to each other in the world. It’s got to be has to give wisdom. I think it has to do all of that. What would you like to Right. So there’s a trusting element of trusting a process that tells you where and what you are, right? And then how you’re connected to all of the other, you know, relationships within that network. So like a very consistent way to demonstrate that. So like you and I, like, what is our relationship here? What like it’s a very kind of like in social settings, it’s very ambiguous kind of just, you know, unspoken relationship that we have here. But like, over time, I’ve developed a trust for what you’ve said, you know, I’ve like, listened to your words. And so I have an understanding of what you represent in the network. And that gives me a connectedness to the network of this ecology of information that’s making sense of the world, gives me a direct feeling of connection to it, right? So it has to take on that character where I can trust the strong resonance at certain layers, right? Like where the information is being gathered, how it’s being distributed. And then right that that trust is in part, I think, demonstrated by my own ability to grasp a certain level of that information, right? To be able to see the network, not just in part, but in whole to some sense. And that that requires like a whole like a pedagogical effort, I think, right? There’s a sequence of instructive like elements, like there are lots of things I had to read in order to get to what I’m looking at right now and seeing the motions that I’m seeing right now, I’m trying to understand these things. So there’s something to that too. So there’s like an educational element. Yeah. So that, I mean, that would link up greatly with Zach Stein’s work and the discussion that I’m having with Zach about this new model of education. And then so there’s like a pedagogy of trust, like an inducing of trust. And this goes to what Jordan and I keep circling back to this reinvential of faith, where it’s again, it’s not the assertion of propositions. But I like what you’re saying. You have this, it’s not like I’ll know it when I see it. And then let me give you maybe a way to revise the analogy. Sure. So like this is from CODSI, right? So when you do experiments with people, you can do what’s called feeling of warmth. So first of all, you have a feeling of knowing whether so you’ve ever had the experience, oh, I know that person’s name, I just can’t remember it right now you have feeling of knowing. Okay, now, what instead of having that as one shot, think of it as something that’s unfolding across time and call that a feeling of warmth. So now what I do is I’m going to give you a problem. And this problem is going to require insight to solve it. And what I can ask you is, well, how close are you to an answer? How close are you to an answer? And initially, nothing. And then what happens is people get this sudden increase in feeling of warmth. And this is before they get the answer. But this sudden increase in the feeling of warmth is their sense that there’s going to be an insight, right? It’s this. So it’s like you said, I’ll recognize it when I know it. But rather than that just being a static thing, this is, I’m proposing to you that it’s more of a dawning phenomena. Right? It’s more of a dawning phenomena. Like it’s a reciprocal opening of the feeling of warmth. Right? It’s not binary, right? So it’s a gradient of some kind. Exactly. It’s accelerating. And part of what the hope is, right? We’re bringing back faith, hope, and love. Part of what the hope is, is that that acceleration I’m sensing is going to be equal to the acceleration of the challenges I’m facing. Correct. Yeah. So that’s great. Yeah. So the design criteria are very much ones of success. Right? You’ve got to be able to successfully navigate whatever the hell this crazy modern landscape is. And yeah, it has to maintain a trajectory that was on before of some kind. Right? Like that’s our sense that we are on, our motion is laminar. It’s fluid. Right? It’s that we’re not experienced. We’re actually, we’re dodging and we’re weaving. Right? We’re like, we’re getting our way through. Yeah. Like there’s definitely a feeling to that. Even in the presence of like strong kind of neurotic tendencies, I think. Like I can play an instrument. And the pressure that I feel of needing to perform a certain kind of answer to the problem I just made prior. Right? Like that tension, that kind of neurotic, can I do it? Can I do it? Is it’s hand in hand with, or maybe even in supplement, I’m not sure, the whole eventual orchestration of the answer itself, the feeling that it’s going to come. So yeah, I don’t know. It’s so strange how it transforms even the tensions of life into a feeling like you are succeeding. This is why jazz, like I think is such a good analogy for it, because often have these like moments of where mistakes or sudden diversions into a place that you weren’t quite expecting reconfigure themselves into this kind of new critical understanding of what it was you could have achieved there. So yeah, you’re right. It is very much a feeling, an ongoing feeling of coming to a solution. And a big part of it is this whole pedagogy of trust. Yeah. This way of like uniting the sources of wisdom, uniting our sense of what it is to earn directly from those who have done hard and good work to make sense of this world. Right? Because it’s not easy. It’s not. But then, since we’ve articulated this, this helps to clarify the problem in some ways. Because what we can now ask is, what are the challenges to trust? Because let’s think like in the past, ways in which trust was forgiven, given ahead of time, was like by people having a commitment to shared propositions. Right? You know, we all go together and we all say the Apostles creator than I see in pre. And that means, right, your public declaration of these things engendered my trust in you before I knew you. It helped to get, it forgave, you know what I mean? I’m playing on the word forgive here, but to give ahead of time. Right? It forgave trust. Now, the thing is, we’re entering into a space where it’s massively pluralistic and where commitments to sets of propositions that we’re going to hold to in an unquestioning fashion, that’s not part of how this space is working at all. Right? So the question is, given that many of the, given that many of the previous ways in which human beings have created widespread networks of trust, what are the alternative mechanisms by which we will bring trust into existence in the way you and I have been talking about? Yeah. So that’s of course the one of the questions, probably. Right? Yeah. So again, that maybe that’s like a feeling question. What is it? Trust is a feeling. It’s almost like, maybe trust doesn’t have a feeling, but it’s associated with the feeling often. Yeah, I think the feeling is more like a criterion. The more like the more, here’s an analogy for you. I get a sense of conviction when I’m perhaps in contact with the truth. Right? My sense of conviction isn’t the truth. It’s something that helps me home in on the truth. Right? Right. Yeah. Okay. So like, like mutually mutual. I mean, one of the things that you mentioned this earlier, the weird, the weird and weird and wonderful intimacy of this medium, right? Because mutually accelerating disclosure generates trust. And so like, like you said, when we’re in, when we’re creating a culture around the weird way in which your face and my face are so close and so large, but it’s in which your face and my face are so close and so large, but not, not, not, not like if you were this large in my visual field, like we’d be having a, like my physical visual field, we’d be having sort of a, even if we like each other and I like you, but there’d be all this machinery going, oh, no. Right. But there’s something about the medium. And then there seems to be a cultural grammar that’s springing up around it that says, well, one of the things we can do here, right? One of the things we can do here is that intimacy can be accepted for a kind of slowly, well, like, and there’s got to be wisdom in this. There has to be finesse, but a finesse, mutually accelerating disclosure so that trust is possible between people. Yeah. Well, so this is, this is, I mean, I’m glad you went that way too, because I was kind of going the other side, which is like, there’s not just a, there’s a yin and the yang to it, right? There’s a passive and an active aspect to this, which is something like, you’re not just going to be receiving and trusting, but a big part of that receptive element is, is knowing how you are capable of giving trust with information. Yes. To be engaged in that process gives you a, lends you a respect for it. No, no, that’s brilliant. I just want to put a pin in that. That’s brilliant that there’s, there’s, there’s an interdependence between trust and being trustworthy. Right. Yes. Yes. That’s very well said. And, and the virtue and just like there’s, there’s a corresponding and allied, aligned even, you know, relationship between understanding and being an understanding person. Right. Yeah. And knowing how deep it can go. Yes. Yeah. And, and yeah, there’s, there’s something to that and allowing people to get there. Yeah. You have to afford them the space of, of doing it incorrectly. And this is where the forgiveness element usually comes in. It’s grace, how you want to form words. There’s something related to, you know, just affording people the chance to make a mistake and then try again. Jordan Hall uses a certain language like the omega rule. There’s certain things that like you’re affording people a chance to, to, to speak what is, what is truly from their perspective and to be what they are. And then in that space, if the, if the dialogus is taking place, place properly, the gap that’s afforded that is filled by the, the transjective rather than individual. I agree. And that sense of filling is like you feel like it is, it’s invigorating, it’s innovating, right? That’s that, that’s, that is like a fuel for the whole social relationship. I think it’s what, you know, it’s, it’s very Pentecostal. It’s like the, the, that’s, and that’s what they’re seeking, right? That’s really what they’re trying to evoke. But, but, you know, some bizarre overextending of the notion. But yeah, there’s, there’s something to that too, which is very trustworthy because it, because it’s involving so many of these integrated functions in our skulls of musher. They’ve, they’ve really, I mean, like these things are quite good at understanding the world. And if we could just trust, if we could trust that full integrated sense, I think in the presence of all of the whole network trusting each of the nodes. And it’s such a phenomenal experience. It really is like. Um, so, so this, this refines the question even more. So we’ve got, we’re starting to get a bit of an answer around this. And I think we’re making really good progress. But then the question comes up that many, why many people are absenting themselves from this, of course, is that they have, they have had their trust betrayed. And this medium, now let’s talk about the dark side of it. This medium that we’re in right now is one of the most betraying mediums that has ever been generated by humankind. Right. It misleads, misdirects, misinforms, gets people caught up for its own, you know, so that they can be exploited. It gets them caught up in adversarial processing, adopting antagonistic narratives. It is, you know, it gets them, it gets them to rage, you know, outrage. And because all of these things help, you know, quickly and, uh, you know, quickly make things salient so that there’s, so that they’re saleable, right. And all that sort of stuff. And so there, there, everything that you and I said is, we’re doing it, that the medium can afford it. But I see that why many people would, maybe even somebody listening to this right now will say, oh yeah, but I was on this space or I was on this discord server and man, you know, and my trust was betrayed. And, you know, and I got caught up in this or, you know, and the way this medium, especially under COVID, it’s just accelerated echo chambering and malicious conspiracy theories and all of that. So there’s not only, there’s not only an internal question of how can people in good faith, how can people in good faith come in to trust within a pluralistic, et cetera, right. There’s also the question of, but what do we do in this culture about the perennial threat of bad faith? Right. I know about the bad faith because there’s a lot of bad actors exercising bad faith in this space. Yeah. I, so I think this is super important. Um, oh yeah. Yeah. Cause I’ve been looking and I’ve been looking for some successful element of like community building. Um, and these efforts have been extensive, right? Like probably since the sixties, maybe, maybe late fifties, a lot of really strange and interesting ways in which people have been trying to come together in a different way than, than what is kind of like a derivative element. It’s like the vest, it’s like the, it’s like the remnants or the leftover spaces after the cubicles are constructed and the minds are built. I think that’s what our culture inhabits, right? It just feels hodgepodge and disintegrated and domicidal, I suppose. But yeah. Yeah. So, um, sorry, I’m a very visual thinker. That’s good. Sometimes I get caught up with, uh, uh, the picture of something quite, uh, the notion of something quite attract, something quite beautiful actually that’s developing here. Um, yeah. So, okay. Sorry. Trust. Um, when transparent. Okay. So, and, and when you are known where, so let’s say like you and I are together and let’s, let’s say I’m a bad actor and I’m trying to like convince you to do something. And w you know, if there were, if, if it was just you and I, you’re susceptible, you’re prey to only one element of trust, right? So like, like you have your capacity, well, I guess two, that’s two tokens, your assessment, my assessment and combined that you’ll decide what to do. But if there’s a third element watching and then they can tell you, well, hey, wait a minute, you know, I, that, uh, okay. And if you increase the network, um, the number of disinterred parties, parties that, uh, potentially have access to, uh, a transaction of trust increases, I think, or decreases, we would say the likelihood that the individual attempt to strategy of, of, um, right, right. Right. So this is the idea of that, that, that every dialogue has to be set within the meta-dialogue. Yes. The dialogue between dialogues and the meta-dialogues. Right. What you want is a dynamically recursive structure there. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Nested relationships of trust. Yeah. And each of them affording an access to like the whole network. Right. It’s something I’m trying to experiment with. In fact, with my own, I’m building a social network called the Metagora. And I’m hoping to demonstrate some aspect of that right there, which is that, um, you give, you, you foster an environment, which, which is capable of distrust with the element. Right. And then you allow it to, in an ephemeral way, produce its own content. Right. And I’m hoping that it will be, um, it’d be worthwhile to see how it is that that has an influence on whether or not people attempt strategies of, uh, well, I don’t know what to call them exactly. I don’t want people in full strategies. I don’t want people gaming the system. Right. Right. Right. So like once, once you have some set of rules, like that’s, that’s what I’ve noticed, right? I mean, once you have a set of rules, it’s relentless. Like, yeah, it eyes on it. People will just, they will find out how to break it and exploit it. And it’s fascinating. Like, uh, and the fact that’s what I’m going through right now, I’m inviting people on the platform to kind of like attack it. And I know that they’ll, they already have, find ways to exploit it. And yeah, but, but the, okay. So establishing that interrelatedness and not allowing people to think that they’re in some isolated pocket that has, uh, you know, nobody’s eyes on it, let’s say if there’s, and this is what’s so fascinating about this notion of like an ever present God watching over you. I think it naturally evokes, um, in many people that, that kind of overwatch sense. Yeah. There’s empirical evidence for this. And some of it is really, really, it’s, it’s almost startling. Um, so you put out the, you don’t want, you don’t have any human being monitoring the coffee earn where people are going to take coffee, but there’s a cup there that, you know, where you’re supposed to put in, you know, some cash for every time you have a cup of coffee. And if it’s just that people won’t do it. But then what you do is above the cup, where you’re supposed to put the deposit, you just put a picture of human eyes. People are more likely to, to put money into the cup. Right. Um, yeah. Yeah. So there’s, yeah, there’s, there’s definitely that sense. Um, but of course that also carries with it threats of big brother, right? So there is no way to sort of like, Oh, well that’s the solution kind of thing. Well, but there is sort of, right. So like, and I think this is the, one of the keys, um, let’s say whatever eyes have access to you, if you have access to it, that gives you the trust, right? That’s the pedagogy of trust because, because I’m scared of big brother watching me because I can’t see big brother, right? But if I, if I were able to port into big brother and I had a camera watching the dudes, watching the screens that were watching me, right? Like I’m like, okay, well then we’ve closed the loop and now we’re all watching each other and we’re all good. Like that’s, that’s well said. So that’s a sense in which this technology and sort of, you know, allow me an analogy, it’s hypertext capacities. Yeah. Could help alleviate this problem. I would, it’d be good to try and bring some of these design features like into like the discord platform or, you know, at the awakening from the meeting crisis discord platform, try to bring some of these design features actively in there, I think would be a helpful thing to do. Yeah. That this is, this is really good stuff we’re doing here right now. No, I really appreciate it. And any input you have in this whole process would be really appreciated. Like the, like this work that I’m going to be doing with Tim, I think a lot of it’s going to be based on work that Forrest Landry is doing. And yeah, I’m just, I’ve got to talk to Forrest. I keep asking. I’d love to talk with him too. Yeah. Well, there’s people like, there’s people that keep recommending I talk to him. I think Jordan’s going to try and Jordan Hall is going to try and get it so I can talk to him. I think that would be really interesting conversation. Yeah. Yeah. And I may have an opportunity to speak in the next day or two. I’m not sure. Because I’ve got a pretty flexible schedule, so I’m able to squeeze in. But yeah, yeah, I’m just, I’m, I’m very hopeful that the efforts that are coming from all of these converging things are, are providing, they’re continuing to provide some measure of sense making of the world that is affording us the capacity to, to build a sustainable future, right? It’s a sustainable relationship with each other and one that we enjoy and appreciate and that feeds back into itself and closes that loop. And that is one that I think affords that to as many people as possible. And it’s such an important element of it. I hope, well, I, I, I hope you’re right. And I work, this came up in a discussion with Lehman. I, I, I, I, I’m going to try everything I can to do that. But I sometimes comfort myself in the middle of the night when the darker aspects of this come to mind, that even if this project, I mean, this is where the comparison and I don’t, I hope I’m not being pretentious, the comparison to Augustine comes in, right? Like, you know, the barbarians are literally at the gate and he’s writing the city of God and he’s comparing the city of God to the city of man. I, I comfort myself that even if we, in some sense, fail, we may be sowing the seeds or preserving the candles for what can, what is going to come afterwards, the way he did. And so for me, that gives, I mean, I’d rather be the former than the latter, but that’s a way of conceiving of the latter that at least means that I don’t fall into, there’s, there isn’t a temptation to sort of a, a kind of despair about this. Again, the latter is horrible because it means a lot of suffering and distress, but it means that, but there’s even the possibility of ameliorating that by what I’m doing with you right here, right now. Right. It’s incredibly valuable, these efforts, right? And it’s a good thing to be engaged in. At the very least it’s, it seems to be training myself up, right? Like I feel stronger engaging and attempting to understand and listening to all of the, the profound insights that other people like yourself were having and then granting to the total network. Yeah. I, I, I don’t get a sense that it’s wasted effort at all. And yeah, I think if we can find a way to allow people to get to know each other and to get to know themselves and then to feel strong enough and capable enough and trustworthy enough that they can integrate into like-minded individuals, I think we’ll see those groups of people produce truly phenomenal things, right? I think so. I mean, I would, I would supplement that by saying that they have to get together. They have to get together. Here’s what I’m trying to say. DIA logos and ecologies of practices need each other. Right. Yes. They need each other, right? That the DIA logos, the people have to get together and there has to be the DIA logos, but the DIA logo, they also have to get together for ecology to practices, which doesn’t mean everybody’s doing the same ecology. That’s what came out of the movement. Somebody said we all have, we use the best cognitive science to understand the important principles of any ecology of practices. And then people have their particular variety because you have your own idiosyncratic history and certain things are going to take for you in the way they don’t take for me and vice versa. And so getting that sort of universal set of principles that are enacted in a pluralism of ecology of practices. I think that also needs to be part of what’s going on here. Yeah, absolutely. You’re affording kind of the pluralism, right? The ability for this multi-perspectival process to afford a better view of the whole structure. And that’s necessarily, I think, going to indicate pluralism, especially if the thing that you’re examining has characteristics which are amenable to a certain kind of expertise. I think just the natural capacity for language to specialize and for experience to isolate into a particular adaptive niche. And you can’t really escape that if you have a certain set of consistent patterns in the environment. So yeah, yeah. So I’m happy to watch and afford that process. To see it unfold and I don’t know, I’m just terribly gratified to be a part of it. It’s… Yeah, it is. It is. I feel the same way too. Well, we’ve talked for quite a while. I think this is a good place to draw to a close. I would like it if we talked again in the future. I invite you to come back to Voices with Viveki. I found both of these discussions really helpful. And I even liked the way we were exemplifying. We got into the pattern of actually doing the logos and doing the reciprocal clarification and the drawing of each other and the joint clarification. And it was not only the material that we were discussing, it was the manner of our discussion that I thought was also valuable. I very much appreciated it. Thank you for the expertise that you demonstrate and the care. Really, that’s the word that keeps coming back to me. Yeah, there is. Yeah. Well, so thank you, Tyler. And like I said, let’s do this again and we’ll set it up. Yeah. Thank you, John. Thank you.