The Weekly Circle #11
Welcome to the eleventh episode of The Weekly Circle! A free Circles in Time newsletter released every Sunday.
Hey everybody,
It’s October, and it feels like spring has officially arrived in Cape Town!
Photo ref: https://bit.ly/3iuCzev
As we move into these last three months of 2020, I’m going to be doing a lot of reflecting on Circles in Time, and exploring what the future might look like for all the related initiatives.
Existing initiatives I will be reflecting on:
Eight Week Circles in Time Programme (Online; Public)
The Weekly Circle Newsletter
Circles in Time Community Members’ Portal
The Members’ Circle Newsletter
The Sample of One Webinar & Podcast Series
New initiatives I will be considering:
Four Week Circles in Time Programme (Online; Enterprise)
Self-Paced Circles in Time Programme (Online, Public)
Two Week Express Programme (Online, Domain Specific)
One Week Learning Retreat (South Africa, Members)
Online Store (Templates, Frameworks, Handbooks)
If you have any feedback, ideas or opportunities for collaboration on any of the above initiatives, this would be a great time to reach out and connect.
WORLD VIEWS
Here are the ideas I’ve been circling around this week.
THE WORLD AROUND US
Finite and Infinite Games
This week saw the passing of the incredible James Carse. The professor, philosopher and author, who is probably best known for his influential book, Finite and Infinite Games.
I am not quite sure how to describe the influence this book has had on me. There isn’t something specific I can point to. Its influence feels more like a lens. A lens that has profoundly shaped the way I see the world. Pulling back the veil on the illusory boundaries that my mind puts in place to provide me with a sense of comparison, competition and control.
It is one of those books I’ll probably read again and again, every two years or so, for the rest of my life. And I’d strongly recommend you give it a read too if you haven’t already. You can buy the book here.
Here are seven of my favourite ideas from Finite and Infinite Games.
“A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”
“Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.”
“Because infinite players prepare themselves to be surprised by the future, they play in complete openness. It is not an openness as in candor, but an openness as in vulnerability. It is not a matter of exposing one's unchanging identity, the true self that has always been, but a way of exposing one's ceaseless growth, the dynamic self that has yet to be.”
“War presents itself as necessary for self-protection, when in fact it is necessary for self-identification.”
“What will undo any boundary is the awareness that it is our vision, and not what we are viewing, that is limited.”
“Nature does not change; it has no inside or outside. It is therefore not possible to travel through it. All travel is therefore change within the traveler, and it is for that reason that travelers are always somewhere else. To travel is to grow.”
“Although it may be evident enough in theory that whoever plays a finite game plays freely, it is often the case that finite players will be unaware of this absolute freedom and will come to think that whatever they do they must do.”
THE WORLD BETWEEN US
Searching for Scenius
Brian Eno, the famous musician, record producer and visual artist, once said that “although great ideas are normally articulated by individuals, they are nearly always generated by communities.”
What Eno is describing here is something called scenius or communal genius. The futurist and author Kevin Kelly grasps the concept nicely in his ‘Technium’ blog series:
“Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or “scenes” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is: “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.”
Kelly goes on to describe four factors for nurturing scenius within a community:
“Mutual appreciation — Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure.”
“Rapid exchange of tools and techniques — As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.”
“Network effects of success — When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.”
“Local tolerance for the novelties — The local “outside” does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. The renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.”
THE WORLD WITHIN US
The Transformational Experiences Conundrum
I’ve been on a big L.A. Paul binge recently. She is a philosopher and author of several fascinating books. The work of hers that I have been circling around relates to an idea she calls ‘transformative experiences’, which she wrote a book about in 2014.
A transformative experience is a surprisingly complicated concept with lots of twists, subtleties and nuances, so any attempt to unpack it here will always miss the mark to some degree.
A better approach may be to share a popular thought experiment that L.A. Paul often uses to get at the intuition of what she is trying to communicate. It is a thought experiment about becoming a vampire… bare with me. Paul writes on the OUP blog.
“Imagine that you have a one-time-only chance to become a vampire. With one swift, painless bite, you’ll be permanently transformed into an elegant and fabulous creature of the night. As a member of the Undead, your life will be completely different. You’ll experience a range of intense new sense experiences, you’ll gain immortal strength, speed and power, and you’ll look fantastic in everything you wear. You’ll also need to drink the blood of humanely farmed animals (but not human blood), avoid sunlight, and sleep in a coffin.
Now, suppose that all of your friends, people whose interests, views and lives were similar to yours, have already decided to become vampires. And all of them tell you that they love it. They encourage you to become a vampire too, saying things like: “I’d never go back, even if I could. Life has meaning and a sense of purpose now that it never had when I was human. It’s amazing! But I can’t really explain it to you, a mere human. You’ll have to become a vampire to know what it’s like.”
In the above thought experiment, how would you make an informed decision about what to do? You cannot know what it is like to become a vampire until you become one. All you know is that if you become one, you will undergo radical changes, changes that you cannot perfectly imagine, on this side of the one-way door.
This is what L.A. Paul calls a transformative experience. It is an experience that is both epistemically new (you have to have it to know what it will be like for you), AND it will change your perspective, values and preferences in ways that you cannot anticipate.
This isn’t just armchair philosophising either. We all are one step away from transformative experiences all the time. Whether it is deciding to have a child, moving in with your partner, moving to a new country, starting a new job or leaving an old one. These decisions will transform us in ways we simply cannot know prior to having been transformed.
Knowing this, how should be approach transformative experiences? L.A. Paul answers beautifully:
“In the end, it may be that the most rational response to this situation is to change the way we frame these big decisions: instead of choosing based on what we think our futures will be like, we should choose based on whether we want to discover who we’ll become.”
Here is an excellent video of L.A. Paul discussing her famous thought experiment and the idea of transformative experiences.
WISE WORDS
The quotes I’ve been circling around this week
ON LIFELONG LEARNING
“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” ~ Richard Feynmann
“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.” ~ Voltaire
“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.” ~ E.M. Forster
“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” ~ Isaac Asimov
“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” ~ Albert Einstein
“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own.” ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. ~ Doris Lessing
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” ~ Aristotle
“Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
ON TRAVEL
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” ~ Mark Twain
“Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.” ~ Isabelle Eberhardt
“Genuine travelers travel not to overcome distance but to discover distance. It is not distance that makes travel necessary, but travel that makes distance possible. Distance is not determined by the measurable length between objects, but by the actual differences between them.” ~ James Carse
“The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.” ~ Alain de Botton
“The only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same pair of eyes, but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust
ON WRITING
“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” ~ Edwin Schlossberg
“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” ~ Stephen King
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” ~ Pablo Picasso
“Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.” ~ Philip José Farmer
“A word after a word after a word is power.” ~ Margaret Atwood
COMMUNITY UPDATE
The Sample of One webinar and podcast series is up and running, with three sessions already having happened over the past few weeks. I’ve been a bit slow with the podcast editing and distribution. It’s tricky, but hopefully, once I have a good system up and running, I’ll build cadence and a faster turnaround time. The first few episodes should be available during the coming week. I’ll also be doing another community members system setup workshop towards the end of the month. More on that soon.
SOMETHING TO PART WITH
David Lynch, on the importance of habits and daily routines for fostering creativity.
Until next week,
Take care,
David
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