Retrospective 2024-23

This is a retrospective of week 23, 2024 (2024-06-03–2024-06-09).

This is a reminder to myself that I still haven’t finished my review of Robert Rosen’s book Anticipatory Systems which I started writing week 10. The reason I mention this is that I listened to Krista Tippett’s conversation with Janine Benyus and Azita Ardakani Walton this week. It’s a conversation about “life’s principles” and “nature’s universals”.¹ Having listened to Janine Benyus in particular, I think organism’s “internal predictive models” are much more sophisticated and dynamic than Robert Rosen thought in the 1970s.²

The following words of wisdom are from On Being with Krista Tippett (my emphasis in italics):³

I personally believe the noise pollution, both physically noise pollution, as well as our inner noise pollution, is probably one of the single biggest threats to our humanity. And to be able to quiet ourselves enough in whatever practice, and then in the fields of discovery of where we work or where we live, find quietude, so that the signal and antenna can even meet is, to me, the front line of the work. Because if we can’t quiet ourselves, getting the instructions, knowing how to meet each other is actually impossible. I would start there.
—Azita Ardakani Walton, On Nature’s Wisdom for Humanity

…when I was an embryo during the war, my mom went to Sufi classes, so I’m the beneficiary of atmospheric mysticism and to have a cellular experience of the more-than. …I’m not an active Sufi in my own way, but the felt experience of the expanse is something I know. And so, often, I just,…when it’s just too much, I just put my little body on the earth. …if you can be naked when you do that, I highly recommend it.
—Azita Ardakani Walton, On Nature’s Wisdom for Humanity

Grief…asks of you to pay attention to it because it’s a flood of energy ultimately. And…it demands of us to metabolize it. … You have to sit with the energy that’s demanding your attention. … And if you don’t metabolize well, you know what indigestion feels like…
—Azita Ardakani Walton, On Nature’s Wisdom for Humanity

…what has soothed me [ever since I was a little girl] is to go to a place that I know very, very well in the natural world. …I would go there and I would know everything about these organisms. …the radical empathy of going and saying, how are you doing this morning? What are you doing this morning? …getting to know a place really, really well is super soothing for me. …there’s a calmness and a confidence that I always return to when watching community unfold in the natural world. And whenever I need to do something, like if I need to…begin something new, I’ll go to a place where spring is happening or where there’s a new opening in a forest and look at newness and how it happens. Or if I need to heal, I’ll go to an old fire scar. I literally will go and look at, find other beings who are doing what I’m doing, and see what they’ll tell me.
—Janine Benyus, On Nature’s Wisdom for Humanity

There’s a lot of joy in the natural world. And the thing is that what is valued in the natural world—the rest of the natural world, and it needs to be in ours as well—is the continuity of life.
—Janine Benyus

This week I’ve also listened to Leanne Whitney’s interview with Thomas Moore. Thomas Moore says (my emphasis in italics):⁴

…I’ve written a lot of books in…my life. And I’m not writing them from my mind. Really, I’m not. I’m writing them from my heart. … It’s not writing from my mind. … I have done a lot of study in my life, but I filter it all through my heart, really. And I think I write all these books that way.
—Thomas Moore https://youtu.be/CxUEQwi47mQ?feature=shared&t=1330

What’s wrong … is that we have allowed our whole world to be dead. We imagine it as lifeless so we can we can bring our microscopes and our instruments to study it. But it is dead. It has no soul. It has no principle of life. It has no intention. … It’s just there and…we can’t relate to it. We can only operate on it and do things with it, and exploit it. I think that’s what’s killing…people, seeing that the world around us is dead. How can you live then? Because you have no guidance. You have no support. … You can’t walk in the woods and feel that you really are, really know, that you’re in a community with the trees and the plants. You can’t know that if your scientific worldview…objectifies that world and makes it lifeless. So that, I think, is is one of our huge problems. If you have that world alive, you can listen to it every day. You’re not going to be lost because you’ll get guidance without any problem.
—Thomas Moore https://youtu.be/CxUEQwi47mQ?feature=shared&t=2817

I think Leanne is absolutely right that the world would look different if we took soul and life into consideration with every step we take!

Imagine if soul was taken into consideration with every step that we take. Our world would be looking quite different.
—Leanne Whitney https://youtu.be/CxUEQwi47mQ?feature=shared&t=3181

I’ve started reading Thomas Moore’s best seller from the early 1990s, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life. I’ve got the impression that the book is written from the mind rather than the heart. Thomas Moore writes:

In my doctoral studies [in religion] at Syracuse University I redefined religion for myself. I see profound value in the many structures and traditions… People hear the word religion and think: creed, organization, dogma, moral persuasion. I hear the same word and think: depth of meaning and heartfelt expression. … we have to honor their [formal religions’] uniqueness while deriving as much insight and inspiration possible from them for ourselves and our communities. … The traditions are precious resources…
—Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

I’d say we all tend to think through the filters of our education. If you have done doctoral studies in religion, then the way you write will be thoroughly colored by that education. You may even be so desperate to hold on to the “profound value” you seen in “structures and traditions” that you redefine the word religion itself?

It’s my job [as a therapist] to empathize with the painful work ahead, but I feel no need myself to do this work with anyone.”
—Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

I wonder how you can guide others (as a therapist) if you haven’t done the painful work yourself?

It is not easy to observe closely, to take the time and to make the subtle moves that allow the soul to reveal itself further. You have to rely on every bit of learning,…and all kinds of reading… Intelligence and education bring you to the edge, where your mind and its purposes are empty.
—Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

I disagree. Every bit of learning, reading, and education is a way of filling, rather than emptying, the mind. Quieting your mind is what brings you to the edge!

Under veckan snubblade jag över följande citat:

Tänk på att du inte kan lita på chatbottens svar till 100 procent. Ibland ”killgissar” den. Den är nämligen utformad för att hela tiden gissa sig fram till nästa ord, nästa mening, nästa stycke och så vidare. Man kan säga att den gissar det mest sannolika svaret…
—Alexander Norén, SVT 20240329 https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/sa-pratar-du-med-ai-pa-ratt-satt

Problemet med att chattbottar “killgissar” återkommer jag till nästa vecka.

Notes:
1. Together they seek guidance and wisdom from the natural world. How does Nature heal? How does Nature grow? How does Nature network and shape community? How does Nature circulate materials? How does Nature learn, adapt, and evolve? How does Nature self-organize collective action? How does Nature regenerate abundance for all?
2. Robert Rosen wrote Anticipatory Systems in the 1970s. He argued that anticipatory control is a distinguishing feature of the organic world. My point is that the notion of anticipation can serve us well, provided we recognize its limitations as well as its strength. See Robert Rosen, Anticipatory Systems, pp. 365–68, 391–92, 415, 418.
3. Janine Benyus and Azita Ardakani Walton, On Nature’s Wisdom for Humanity, On Being with Krista Tippett. Last updated: 20240606. Accessed 20240608. https://onbeing.org/programs/janine-benyus-and-azita-ardakani-walton-on-natures-wisdom-for-humanity/
4. Connecting to Soul with Thomas Moore, New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove. Hosted by Leanne Whitney. Recorded 20240403. Accessed 20240608. https://youtu.be/CxUEQwi47mQ?feature=shared

Update 2024-06-20:
Minor change in Swedish text. Link to next week added.

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