Intentional Society: Consistency and simplicity
Because the more of these I hold, the more people keep showing up: Orientation call this Saturday September 4th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC). Tell a friend!
Consistency
This is the 37th issue of this newsletter -- one for each of the 35 weeks in this year so far, plus a couple setup posts last December. Similarly, the historical record of meetings scrolls for a few page-lengths now.
I see a large part of my role in Intentional Society as providing "activation energy" to this entity/system/thingy made of people, connections, brain waves, and vibes. Consistently. Consistency helps make the container real for us. And it's not because I've exerted a high level of self-disciplinary effort. That each week has been a sandbox of discovery, a playground that reveals itself and ourselves, has made this consistency feel effortless. "35 weeks?! When did that happen?" Cliché alert, but: One day at a time.
Simplicity
Growth, development, transformation - one core concept as mission.
Seeing, perspective-taking, expanding - one core movement as vehicle for that mission.
Relating, reflecting, translating - one core mechanism of inhabiting that movement.
Is it as simple as that? Is that the right simple set? Simple generator functions can produce a boggling amount of complexity. But I don't mean that "underneath it all, the world is actually simple." It's not -- the fractal of detail isn't reducible. Frontal assaults on complex dynamic systems usually backfire. We can't master complexity with complicated expertise.
But I want to claim that our values, and the things that are fundamentally meaningful to us, are relatively simple. And that our best hope is to start from simplicity and grow -- within ourselves, our relationships, and the systems we participate in. Life... uh, finds a way?
Occasionally I let (okay, maybe it just happens) my awareness take in the intractablility of the problems humanity faces. Or the near infinite dimensionality of the space of future possibilities. It's overwhelming, like trying to zoom in and zoom out at the same time. Call it "riding the fractal" perhaps. Can we grow our capacity, can we grow up enough to tend to the inverted pendulum of life set against entropy? Then I comfort myself with the simple maxim that it's more fun to keep playing the infinte game, which in the end may be the only kind of winning move that was ever possible.
Cheers? Cheers,
James