Invoking Social Agency

Wake up!

  • Parents everywhere

Two evenings playing with core principles of inquiry

Eight week series to embody group intelligence

Blending experiential practices from authentic relating, improv and dance; Healing frames like constellations, psychodrama and reflex integration; with the frontiers of theoretical biology and complexity science. This series will distill generative seeds of embodied collective intelligence.

$200 for the full series, X% for the space & supplies, and the rest to be put into a common pool for the group's decision making. There will be scholarship to apply to, details to come.

Participants commit to six out of eight gatherings, and to journal 2 times a week.

Journals will be collaboratively annotated in custom survey software Alex is prototyping. The purpose of which will be to scaffold collective intelligence at group scales of 12, 40, 200 and beyond.


As the sun declines towards the solstice here in Tucson, lets gather and cultivate agency in ourselves and our world. Amongst tumultuous developments in politics and global evolution, lets turn inward and recognize the latent generative capacity.

The Process

Connecting with resourceful fields of experience.

Confronting critical self talk and bringing awareness to fabrication of self and world.

Exploring our patterns in the relational ecology of merging, joining, following, leading, splitting.

Surfacing and constellating memories for reorganization.

Mapping the actant networks generating our realities.

Developing pragmatic seeds and scaffolds to realize inspired living.

Principles (wip)

  1. Embodiment - To steward inner & outer ecosystems of animal forces
  2. Non linearity - Openness to the unknown, cultivating conditions
  3. Attunement - What is the medicine for the moment?
  4. Epistemic Justice - Against silencing

Conceptual Background

Naturalising sense-making1 takes scientific perspectives as an enabling constraints. Two main reasons are believing that scientific process keeps us honest and that if we walk the tightrope effectively, our efforts can benefit from the science's network of rigorous thought. That means that when we use a term like "Frame Semantics" we align ourselves with researchers around the world studying diverse social phenomena, lowering the energy barrier for expanding this work.

Yet, science antagonistic, and situated in structures of power, the very process that centralizes knowledge will confront our commitment to individual sense making. This contradiction can be seen in the two cultures present in the university system, the humanities and science. Some of the most exciting frames, psychic phenomena, mythological and imaginal ask a suspension of disbelief, can we be present phenomenologically and still maintain epistemic rigor?

Cognitive Science: Frame Semantics, Simulation Semantics, Active Inference

Theoretical Biology: Basal Cognition, Cognitive Glue (Grease), Multiscale Competency, Network Physiology

Sociology: Collective Effervescence, Presentation of Self, Interaction Rituals

Complexity Science: Criticality, Non linear dynamics, Renormalization

Budhism: Dukkha, Tanha, Anicca, Anatta, Nibbana 2

Quantum Mechanics: Superposition, Entanglement, Uncertainty, Implicate order

Core influences

Art of Accomplishment

Cynefin & Estuarine Mapping

Wayshaping: A Multiscale Framework for Behavior Change

The Heart of the Teachings on Recognition

Reverence to the Divine, which constantly performs the Five Acts [of creation, preservation, reabsorption, concealment, and revelation]—and which, by so doing, reveals the ultimate reality of one’s own Self, which is nothing but the Joy of Awareness.


References


  1. Naturalising sense-making

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  2. (mis)Translating the Buddha

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