S O N G

Native Bead Brooch

While many will have their minds firmly fixed on the story of the butterfly that, by flapping her wings in the forests of Amazonia creates storms in New York, very few will pay attention to the real miracle, which is that of the irreversible transformation in chaos of the pupa to become the butterfly.

At de Lange 1999

—the only real way to develop strategy is to use a process where one goes to their “primary knowing”, tapping into source and then listening deeply, moment to moment, as the path unfolds—walking the path as it is created.”

Joseph Jaworski 2008

The Horse, the Magpie, the Buffalo and the Hoop

One of the realizations today is this. I trust you. The ‘oar’ (your background of human endeavour, human relationships and domains of expertise) are vast and beyond my capability to understand even if we lived together for next 100 years. I do not under-estimate the significance of what we are sharing and effective action is in taking the comment of Maturana and living it with others in real-time and pure-play. My invitation to you is “open conversations of possible possibilities” within your network of trusted friends, associates and relationships. In freedom let’s see what emerges and I am always already with you in the ‘speculative conversations’ that may emerge. I am committed to entering effective actions in our heart’s desire and I know that all of us are ready for some new ‘surprises’ to arise in our joyful concern to designing a new future together.

Patric Roberts 12th June 2008, Founder, The Order of Earth Sustainability & Elder Wisdom in 21st Century /h3>

PREAMBLE IN TIME

My correspondent (t)here was/is\will be Patric. Patric has spent over twenty years studying the works of Maturana, Flores and Varela. He has been ordained as a priest in the holy order of MANS. Continual studies led him to trip over pieces I’d written seven years ago. Over the five weeks following 12th June, Patric and i co-created in a flow of mutually respectful exchanges comprising history present and future—through explanations, imagineerings, sharing ‘stories’, learning, languaging, ‘breakdowns’ [creative collapses], diversions, confessions, art and pictures—mainly through the medium of the Internet. We seek to operate in languaging with respect and guidance of Lakota wisdom and other traditions.

The Lakota people, like all the First Peoples of America, have been subjected to near genocidal treatment, dislocation, prejudice and disrespect. Period. There were estimated to originally be over fifty million Native People in the continent in the generations before Europeans came; there are now less than a million. Put simply. There is this saying, The white man will only see what he has done to the world when he sees he cannot eat dollar bills. Today, even the ostriches know those times are come. The Lakota Sioux have their own Creation Story. It is about a race between the animals of the water, the air and the land. The Magpie features large in that story.

According to Joseph Campbell, [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nysi8S8R1Uo] when, as a boy of nine, Black Elk received his’visions’ he realized the struggle to teach—that, inside the Mappa Mundi is the Axis Mundi, and that this World as a Whole this very Everything (which) is nothing more and nothing less than you and I in the act I’d call for the time being, Presencing.

Here, for what it is worth, is a stroke of my ‘oar’ over a two day period concerning a tiny part of Lakota Wisdom or as Jhon Goes In Center says it, common sense applied. If you would prefer something far deeper then Jhon Goes In Center taught this at MIT. (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Urban-Studies-and-Planning/11-941Fall2003/LectureNotes/ )

Jhon is an integral partner in this conversation of becoming that we have been developing over the past month.

Six Magpie Tail Feathers, bundled with Leaf, Mid July 2008, North Moreton

I wrote to Patric

This afternoon in a lane at the back of the village that’s sunken down, below field level by about ten feet on one side and six on the other, i saw an iridescent feather, then another and then another—six in all. I picked them up, bound them with plant twine and have them right here beside me. (above)

If i recall, the Magpie plays an important part in Lakota creation story.

Do you attach any importance to this? It is very unusual.

Love,
Andrew

Andrew,

Yes I find the Magpie story in the Lakota tradition in resonant with ‘autopoiese’ and i feel like i am involved.

Why should evidence of connection with magpies in UK and feathers showing up be a surprise to us. If we stay in ‘feel’ of the realization-in-living as an autopoietic cognitive agent, that we are experiencing and pointing to in the world, maybe a flock of eagles may nest on your lands tomorrow. The autopoietic paradox of ‘becoming whole in beingness’ and the ‘universe is a reflection of being in the natural world’ is no surprise and a confirmation of realization-in-living.

Our discourse in conversation is not a speculation of mythological and theories of living, it is a participatory creative encounter that is changing both of us. It may change others as we open the discourse and this is my prayer. The creation story of the Black Hills is a positive ending to predatory chaos in this moment, realization-in-living as Homo sapiens amans—human beings. What you and i shall become in this story is unknown and not-knowing is a good thing. Enjoying magpies and feathers is a part of the journey that has meaning for us in this conversation. This is what i see.

Patric

That evening I asked Anona about the nursery rhyme concerning Magpies, “One for Sorrow, Two for Joy…” – and I asked what’six’ was for? She recited the nursery rhyme, and six is Gold.

Mel Lone Hill and Patric Roberts

“Mel Lone Hill’s grandfather was the last great Oglala Lakota Sioux Holy Man. In 1973 he spoke in Lakota before the Congress of the US and retrieved the right for all Native Americans to practice freely their spiritual practices after 97 years of restrictive oppressions on language, practices and customs.

“Andrew, you asked me what I am doing in the picture. The sacred pipe of the Lakota people is their most sacred ceremonial symbol. When the Lakota agreed to the 1868 treaty with the USA they warned the government and concluded the treaty with a pipe ceremony. When President Clinton visited Pine Ridge in 1996 they had the pipe present and no prayers. It is a communication prayer tool for directly contacting the creator and the unseen world. Before you open the sacred bundle carrying the pipe you sage your body and hands in prayer. What I was doing was loading the pipe and saying a prayer to the seven directions. My friend, if you do this the creator will come to you.”

Patric continued to write:

“As a human being our cognition acts as a listening deterministic structure within the musical instrument we call universe. Our mathematics and poetry are the reflection we listen to as the echoes of the entire universe. We are unable to disclose more than a fragment of “what is” in our most exalted moments. Today, the quantitative aspects of our knowledge or the epistemological concerns of our knowing—we have forgotten the deeper psychic dimensions of our living history that activated our current awareness—captivate us.

“Poetry and the depths of soul presence in our lives, emerge in our living together because the inner form of mountains, oceans, forests, animals and sky activate depth awareness in humans. Such profound feelings and emotions are personal and individuated and hint a destiny of mutual evocation of mountains, animal, world. Depth communication of primordial existence is the reality at the foundation of all being. As humans we give voice to our most exalted and terrible feelings because we find ourselves bonded and immersed in a universe filled with such awesome realities. Surrounding universe activates the inner depth of each individuated being in the universe.

“Take for instance the monarch butterfly. Climbing out of a pupal shell, stretching its wings in the drying sunlight, what other than the voices of the universe can this butterfly rely upon for guidance? It must make a journey that will cover territory filled with both dangers and possibilities, none of which has been experienced before. To rely on its own personal experience or knowledge would be a disaster for the butterfly. Instead it finds itself surrounded by voices of the past, of other insects, of the wind and rain and the leaves of the trees.

“Through the bonding and listening in interaction a precise pathway is disclosed moment to moment. The monarch butterfly has little, if they confront any individual awareness of the difference between beneficial winds and dangerous winds until it is reality. The winds speak to the butterfly, the taste of the water speaks to the butterfly, and the shape of the leaf speaks to the butterfly and offers guidance that resonates with the cognitive wisdom encoded in the determined structure of being a monarch butterfly. Such communication takes place beneath the level of language in the spirit or breath of life itself. The source of guidance is both within and without and the universe acts as a singular listening as the nature of being itself. The capacity within human awareness to hear and respond to the spontaneities of the universe was deeply developed by primal peoples of every continent. In order to approach this genius we need to recognize the vast diversity of their cultural expressions an insistence on establishing a close relationship with the psychic depths of the universe. Their aim was a life in resonant participation with the rhythms of reality. For this reasons the drum became their primary instrument. The drum was part of their sacred techniques for orchestrating the unity of the human/universe dance.

“The adventure and experience within the universe depends upon our capacity to listen. Why do we enjoy art, poetry and songs? Why do we look forward to visiting nature and experience beauty? What do we get from these encounters where we shut down the robotic structure of modern culture and listen, reflect and still the maniacal ghostly voices of modern culture?”

Our conversation moved this day to the Lark, and it provoked this from Patric, 14/07/ 2008:

“Yesterday, i did some artwork for a new baby, ‘Buffalo Jack’, who was born on Friday night. His father, Jeff, had gone to Pine Ridge and participated in a sacred harvest of a buffalo in January and i participated with my friend Bamm. After the buffalo was brought down, prayers and sage, eating the liver, we discovered the mother was pregnant. We were all shocked! What does this mean? Pictures had been taken of the hunt and i left them alone and could not touch them. Then on Friday night ‘Buffalo Jack’ was born and on Sunday i went to visit him. It was clear that the story could finally come together and be shared. So yesterday in my simple i-photo studio i looked, explored and crafted every picture to make a coherent story of trauma, drama and birthing of a new future. i pray today that in some miraculous way i am an ‘uncle’ to this new life arising and somehow in his wondering am able to provide a new beginning for my own self and confidence in a new creation emerging in the next generation!”

This next morning I was walking down the same lane (the walk is a squared circle) and further along there were four more feathers from the tail of a Magpie. I bound them up with a different plant stem and put them below my picture of Mel Lone Hill, next to where I write, and near to the picture of Patric with the Lakota sacred pipe.

I then went downstairs and asked Anona, what did ‘four’ mean. She said, “A boy.”

Then I wondered aloud, adding six and four asking her what ten meant. “There weren’t ten in the story.”

Then I thought about the idea of ‘collapse’ and took the ‘four’ from ‘six’.

Two is’Joy’.

If one were only an Indian, instantly alert, and on a racing horse, leaning against the wind, kept on quivering jerkily over the quivering ground, until one shed one’s spurs, for there needed no spurs, threw away the reins, there need no reins, and hardly saw that the land before one was smoothly shorn heath, when horses neck and head would already be gone.

Kafka, The Wish to be a Red Indian

Inscribed in Exhibition catalogue 1980, Andrew Campbell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IikpKokQH3o&NR=1

This is a Gift. This is a long piece. This is a multimedia piece. It is one of two.

It grew, it shrank, it grew and it shrank again all much as I made it.

I suggest that each of the YouTube links should be opened and followed. For example, the two young people speaking in this piece, which I found after I had compiled this entire piece. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRaM0whsnxo

I was desiring to locate a hinge, to move authentically into a space between a strange acquisition, a gift of The By-Laws some years ago from the Cherokee People (Sandhills Tribe) and now in the last few weeks this’roundly’ from the circles of the Lakota People. An initiating and moving phrase, ‘the hinge’ if you will, is taken from the Cherokee notes and it is simple; we already know it—we must learn to walk in balance, that it is the sole responsiblity of the humans to do this.

One aspect of walking in balance that I have tried to set into this piece is that which affords reflection space in order to reconcile two kinds of highly emergent technology, the presencing through the very media you are engaging with now, the Internet, and the presencing I associate myself with, mainly in the public sphere, through a six year friendship, partnership and collaboration with Otto Scharmer and Joseph Jaworski. In other words, I am figuring that this piece transcends itself in some ways.

I have removed or edited down or out large parts of my ‘voice’ in the dialogue between Patric and myself—two strangers. I have left enough of myself, with some occasional date markers to keep the balance and flow of dialogue in chronological time (there are others implicate with it) and try to keep a whole and sensible sense of form to the reader, i.e., ‘you’, both as plural and singular, in order to collect maybe more strangers on the walk.

As an artist I am a generalist. I was described as an ‘eclectic’ and labelled ‘vociferous’. That, by the way, was a road to death for a career through dealership, which is the path of many modern and contemporary artists. Today, in Continental Europe I am co-designing a programme based on Creativity in Leadership for Sustainability. A co-ceative colleague’s e-mail ‘sig’ is from Buckminster Fuller—Fuller was a generalist, like da Vinci, and he was also vociferous and,

Strongly influenced by his great aunt Margaret Fuller, a leader in theosophical society, he considered the machine inseparable from the spiritual principle operating in the universe. Margaret Fuller’s transcendentalism was an inspirational force through his lifetime, as was Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and Henry Ford’s introduction of automation into the workplace. A triangle of spiritualism, science, sculpture as mechanization is ever-present in his work.

In spoken word I am no longer that vociferous. In writing maybe ‘verbose’. The ‘thing’ about this, my walking-talking herein-herafter, is that Patric eschews public proclamations, and those he seeks to represent—Elders, like his friend Mel Lone Hil— are virtually silent. Who can blame them?

Here is the rub for me. I see right now a pointlessness in presenting here what we/I have made. I undertook to make this [whatever it is] as a response to some attachment to [whatever it is in] to the Native American lifespirit that seems to want to, at least occasionally, surface through me.

Someone who writes well enough and gets published in circles not so disimilar to this—another kind of special interest group—will, for the sake of argument, write and publish something he really knows and cares about, in fact something we nearly all care about—say social ‘justice’—and yet when the hosts of the forum invite a forum discussion—response—zero.

So, I am just saying (that I hope, but I don’t over hope) that many of us/you will accommodate what Patric desires. That you will be the group who can and will read the lines, between the lines and some of you through the lines (because, believe me these people know all about ‘lines’) and make effective contact. Everything I have learned in 55 years on Planet Earth tells me that ‘tapping into this root of wisdom’ today is worth the reading of ten thousand Blog regurgicogitations and mash-up re-entries and I’d add, Journal essays—said with respect and as contributor and editor of one and a friend and occasional guide to this one.

There is a lot of ‘shit’ out here on the Internet. It’s reflecting the wider world. I worked with people who profess to handle it with applomb last year. It was really nice to get into that piece of ‘action’. The shared ‘theory in practice’ there was and remains, for which I can vouch safe, and that there is all this deep, deep ‘shit’ out there in ‘the systems’. Why? Because there is plenty of it in us. U and me. That’s a kind of tautology—but it’s also ‘commons sense’. Quite why it gets invoiced at 2,000 dollars a day to intelligent people and systems they represent is beyond me. It’s probably beyond Patric. And yet we and you know that Fernando Flores charges twenty times that per day. So, please expect some ‘shit’ here.

I looked for some Lakota material on the Internet. it ranged between Jhon’s lecture at MIT to complete ‘fakery’, sentimentalism and unsympathetic misappropriation of their ancient culture. How does one safeguard the future well, passing on the generational song so it doesn’t go the way of large parts of the ecological spider’s web? In this I saw that particular ‘hinge’—the Native girl who is perhaps (m)any a typical American girl—she is sitting in some small room, sounds like ‘shit’ TV in the background. She doesn’t appear to be the daughter of any fancy consultant, lawyer or City Trader to me. She has just heard and seen a Lakota lullaby, and if you really attend to her by listening past the background ‘shit’ you will see something really, really, beautiful happening— something profoundly integral going on in the shining face and the dark brown eyes. I suggest you tune in to it, then go to the one at the top of the page and then close that hoop – circle.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxH0b7cFgj8

Hiawatha, Pastels on hand made paper, 2004 A2, Collection the Artist. On long loan, London.

This piece was made as part of a commission from GSK’s Headquarters in London. It depicts what appear to be two heads, the top wears some kind of bonnet (hence the title) and appears to be in pain and/or ecstacy. It was shown in the winter of 2004 and was taken to the London tube and then bus to its current location, just a few days prior to the London bombings in May 2005 in the same location. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_Hiawatha (To be visited before proceeding)

ENTER

In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I, there is a scene in which two ill-assorted men, the vainglorious Glendower and Henry Percy, aka Hotspur, meet in Bangor. They are there to form a military alliance—and it will prove an ill-fated one. The scene is haunting (Hotspur has not long to live), yet it is wonderfully funny. During the course of it, Glendower, who has a reputation as a wizard, boasts of his magical powers to a sceptical Hotspur. “I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” Glendower declares. “Why, so can I, or so can any man,” Hotspur dryly replies, “But will they come when you do call for them?”

Will they indeed? In Shakespeare, there is a frequent association between the sea, magic, spells, incantations and the imagination—Prospero’s last action, before he relinquishes his island and his powers, is to drown his books. Those spirits can be kindly or capricious, and they’re never less than dangerous, so it’s as well to placate them first. Make them offerings. Give them silence, isolation, patience and slog. Give them anonymity—as Charlotte Brontë once wrote, all writers should “walk invisible” .

JUMP

What do people do at work? They go to meetings. How do we deal with meetings? What is it about sitting face to face that we need to capture? We need software that makes it possible to hold a meeting with distributed participants—a meeting with interactivity and feeling, such that, in the future, people will prefer being telepresent”.
Bill Gates, 1999

The biggest challenge to developing telepresence is achieving that sense of “being there.” Can telepresence be a true substitute for the real thing? Will we be able to couple our artificial devices naturally and comfortably to work together with the sensory mechanisms of human organisms?
Marvin Minsky, 1980

The first psychologist to systematically study media in the 20th century, Hugo Munsterberg, hinted at what has not always been apparent: “Media obey laws of the mind.” Bricken echoed this thought in a more pithy version linked to the medium de jour, “Psychology is the physics of virtual reality.” Merging the phrasing of Munsterberg and Bricken today we can say that: Media obey not the laws of physics, but the laws of the mind.

All media are extensions of some faculty, psychic or physical.
Marshall McLuhan

McLuhan made it clear that there was more to the brain and body; there was a technology, the extended mind. Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that issues in perception, what McLuhan would call extensions of the senses, have been central to the design and user experience of virtual and augmented reality—both the Hardware and the Software. I’d simply offer to triangulate with Wetware.

But the phrase, “Psychology is the physics of virtual reality,” implies more. Like physics, psychology holds a key to our understanding of reality. This fact suggests that virtual environments have less to do with simulating physical reality per se, rather it simulates how the mind “perceives” physical reality. Enter phenomenological presence! This is why presence has become a central issue in the engineering, design, and evaluation of media technology; why a journal from a hardcore engineering school like MIT bears the name of a psychological goal, Presence, and why communities of engineers, designers, psychologists, and other researchers are collaborating to understand, measure,and engineer the other presence.

As Munsterberg, McLuhan, Bricken and others have envisioned, presence is about how the mind “perceives” reality, not the reality itself; not physics, but psychology; the extended mind, the place where experience, technology, and psychology meet. My take, FWIW [for what it’s worth-ed.], is that perception and the perception of perception is reality itself.

IMAGINATION

Eye of the Hurricane, Acrylic on paper, 2004 by Kari Palm, Alaska

Sitting at the desk in the early AM, the window facing due east as the sun rises into my eye and a man named Patric arrives, writing as himself and ‘nameless wanderer’ out of the BLUE:

My dear friends, (At de Lange, Judy Tal and Andrew Campbell)

I invite you to explore with me a practical research notion for exploring the meaning of Homo sapiens amans in our world today! Let me introduce myself by saying that your research conversation on “Homo sapiens amans” that I discovered today is why I call you “friends.” A friend is a domain of human relations where the social loving animal lives in legitimacy-in-coexistence in the presence of another. It is a space of relationship where self-negation and demands-for-obedience are left behind in living together. In my assessment it is the domain of expertise that Homo sapiens have in the biological root of understanding capable of transforming a ‘patriarchal culture’ into a ‘biological culture’ of Homo sapiens amans.

I love autopoiese and my heart’s desire is to bring forth a world culture where the Homo sapiens amans (Elder Wisdom of Generations) is a platform for a coherent voice of designing together the future of humanity on Earth. In May 2002 I founded The Order of Earth and our first global project is the Lakota People living on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, USA. The traditional elders translated The Order of Earth to Maka Si Tomni (Surrounding the Universe) and declared a mission of “Bringing Forth a Thriving Lakota Language & Culture.” I invite you to explore my breakdowns and opportunities in this endeavor today. I offer this invitation as an effective action to explore the concerns we have as Homo sapiens amans.

Prejudicial Background of this Cognitive Agent:

I met Humberto Maturana in June 1984 in San Francisco, California, at a conference led by Fernando Flores entitled “Peace, Passion, and Relationship.” Humberto’s presentation was an illuminating experience regarding a new awareness of “sharing a biological universe within the web of life” and as Homo sapiens “living in a linguistic universe” by living in identity and coordinations of coordinations in co-structured standard practices. And he offered the possibility of a new mutually agreed upon standard practice to design a future together that addresses the predatory chaos, human distrust and political aggression we experience: “I request X by Y—I promise X by Y.” So my invitation to each of you is an act of co-existence in taking effective actions to the permanent human concerns of Homo sapiens amans.

Enclosed is an “Autoenthnography of Autopoiese: Communication, Relationship and Community” (Emerge-N-SEE new edit in 2002) that was submitted to the “International Symposium on Autopoiese: Biology, Language, Cognition, Society” in November 1997 in Belo Horizante, Brazil.

Andrew, This writing was a nine-page poster at the symposium written by a “nameless wanderer.” My shame and embarrassment as a human being is ever within me and the notion that anything I would ever have to offer would be celebrated frightens me. I appreciated Judy Tal’s comment: “Bless the healer”, At. (that’s how we greet a person who felt bad and is feeling now better). This is what Humberto’s insights have done for me! [Note: neither At nor Judy picked up the thread offered.]

Since the symposium I have continued to encounter the prejudicial dynamic entropy of the patriarchal culture at a level of human stress and personal experience that should have killed me! Yet, like a child trusting the heart of the matter who can easily throw aside the injurious abuses of exclusion, appropriation, and aggression, I continue to explore the meaning of being autopoietic in a mood of joyful concern committed to bringing forth the “Pony—Homo sapiens amans” in my living with others. My assessment is the world is crazy, not me! Humberto is a supporting wise elder for saying “no.”

I offer this metaphor: “We are on a train going a thousand miles an hour (cheaper, better, faster primarily committed to consumption, entertainment and aggression). There is no conductor or engineer guiding the train and the passengers are partying and raising hell like there is no tomorrow. The train has left the precipice and is plummeting through space about to hit the ocean in a disastrous crash (everyone has already had a few beers and the terror, panic and trauma of flying through the air in free-fall is causing the participants to order a few beers to diminish the pain and suffering occurring. And the train experiences a disastrous crash; there is’one single unified reflection’ by ALL the participants on the train: we did it to ourselves, it is our responsibility and we can redesign our way of being and living together.”

I have investigated deeply the sacred masculine initiation of men in modernity through the International Mankind Project. The initiation of men is the hope of our world. Leadership in every domain of human activity is in complete chaos and distrusted in our daily living. There is no future for humanity short of transforming the patriarchal culture of exclusion and appropriation featuring primarily human aggression, competition and consumption as a way of being and living. Exclusion and appropriation is not based in gender; it is a social co-structured agreed upon standard practice of males and females for generations.

The Order of Earth/Maka Si Tomni (Surrounding the Universe):

This exploration in masculinity for what was missing in my human understanding led me into relationship with the Lakota People: an ancient oral languaging that was passed from “grandparents to grandchildren” for generations. The “Lakota Paradigm” is a radical viewpoint compared to western patriarchal/colonial standard practices. This is a traditional languaging where life is a mystery, timeless, and you live in the now, natural law. The family is “trusted” as the altar of your legitimacy-in-coexistence and learning is a social practice from birth to death in social relations. As an autopoietic cognitive agent your living experience is connected to the rocks, water, plants, animals and stars: living cognitive agents within the web of life. A languaging where the community co-structured standard practices hold that there is no linguistic distinctions for animal, good-bye (death) or profanity in human social relations. A living paradigm in natural law where bodyhood is based in biological natural ethical virtues as a way of being and living: respect, generosity, knowledge, courage and wisdom.

The real phenomenon is that the “creation stories” conserved in the heart of the Lakota People are still intact: not one stone has been removed, violated or changed. The heart-song desire of the Homo sapiens amans has been conserved like a timeless diamond and the social loving animal is still eating, praying and singing together. What is interesting is that their creation story is being proven in the new awareness emerging in the fields of biology, physics and cosmology.

I have committed everything to this endeavor: honor, life, wealth and family relations. And like many times in my life I am at the “end of my rope” and the only thing left to do is to “let go” and “write” and see what arises. Maka Si Tomni is a council of “First Nations” elders who desire to tell their story and share their honest assessments within the global conversations: peak oil, war and poverty, climate change, population and social justice, extinction of biodiversity, spirituality and death. What is missing in this moment is the support as a human learning organization from domain expertise in the exploration of Homo sapiens amans conversation? Is it possible for Maka Si Tomni, a living Lakota cultural organization, to be embraced as a thriving language and culture in modernity?

Current Immediate Funding Needs of The Order of Earth/Maka Si Tomni:

The Order of Earth, a Colorado Non Profit established in May 2002, is committed to exploring a new configuration for “Elder Wisdom” as an interactive educational Internet communication platform based in human commitment addressing sustainability in the 21st century. The Order of Earth is a Non-Denominational, Non-Sectarian, Non-Political, Non-Partisan, Non-Governmental organization. This endeavor has been privately funded and invites benefactor’s support and participation in our endeavor. Enclosed is “Clarion Call” that shares The Order of Earth mission as a new configuration. All donations to support the mission and administrative management are anonymous and can be made either on-line at www.makasitomni.org or by contacting directly Vaughan Counts, Treasurer of The Order of Earth/Maka Si Tomni: Cell 713-305-9545 Email: vcounts@texmark.com

In April 2007 The Order of Earth committed to the Lakota People and Pine Ridge Reservation as the first project to explore this new Elder Wisdom notion. The Lakota Traditional Elders translated “The Order of Earth” into Lakota “Maka Si Tomni (Surrounding the Universe)” and declared a mission “Bringing Forth a Thriving Lakota Language and Culture.” The initial work has disclosed the contrast of indigenous “elder wisdom” in language, creation stories, sovereignty and generational coherences of ancestry as a basic fundament to any thriving people and culture and contrasts the current modern technological culture of globalization for economic benefit without any reasonable reflection or restraint in coordinating within the web of life.

The Lakota Paradigm:

Jhon Goes In Center’s is a Lakota scientist and presents the “Lakota Paradigm” as an introduction to an elder consensual domain expertise of 1890 that was connected to land, water, plants, animals and cosmos, demonstrating a way of being and living in natural law. Contrasting current modern industrialized technological practices of growth without connection, reflection, restraint and the loss of balance within the web of life. Watch the 10-minute “Lakota Paradigm” video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nysi8S8R1Uo

The “Lakota Paradigm” viewpoint is not limited to the insights of generations of indigenous peoples. It is echoed by leading bio-diversity research and seminal expert Harvard Professor O.E. Wilson’s Ted 2007 winner presentation “Encyclopedia of Life.” Watch this 22-minute educational experience of humanity’s current state of knowledge of biodiversity on planet earth.http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/83

The paradigm offered intersects with humanity’s current global crises: peak oil, climate change, war and poverty, population, extinction of biodiversity and unrestrained globalization based on economic growth. The viewpoint offered raises questions to explore in technological cultural design flaws and standard practices constituting current education, consumption and future possibilities. Domain experts in indigenous cultures, professional experts and scientists are invited to join this exploratory conversation by joining the Maka Si Tomni Advisory Council researching the questions and possible educational solutions to these human concerns. Contact Jhon Goes In Center to participate Email: jgic1@earthlink.net or Patric Roberts Email: tomni08@gmail.com

Maka Si Tomni / First Nations News / Film Productions:

Maka Si Tomni Productions is a Lakota/First Nations media company dedicated to providing “First Nations News” and “Documentary Films” that share elder wisdom and possibilities of redesigning current standard practices in designing a future world together based in respect for the web of life. “First Nations News” is being launched through Denver Open Access Media and invites correspondents and open access media organizations to join our developing network enterprise.

Maka Si Tomni Productions is currently in the creative process of producing two Lakota documentaries that open up new conversations regarding elder wisdom, creation stories, historic events and current scientific knowledge in physics, biology and cosmology.

“The Lakota Paradigm” explores elder wisdom in regards to creation stories that have being transmitted orally from grandparents to grandchildren for generations and is still intact in the traditional Lakota language. The surprising insight is the emerging scientific awareness is congruent and coherent with the Lakota creation story.

“The Lakota Ride Again” explores the historic perspective of traditional “First Nations Elders” in regards to the historic “Battle of Greasy Grass” on June 25, 1876. The documentary is an exploration from descendants that confronts patriarchal/colonialism culture of exclusion, appropriation and aggression that has produced inter-generational trauma and standard practices of growth and globalization in modernity that are rejected as a sensible way of sustaining humanity in the web of life.

We invite interested production partners and benefactors to support this “First Nations” media company and become a participant in bringing forth “elder voices” within the emerging global “open access media” network. To participate contact Tony Brave, Pine Ridge Reservation, Cell 605-685-4095 or email: tbrave@gmail.com or Patric Roberts, Denver, Cell 303-803-4662 or email:tomni08@gmail.com

Possibilities for Organizational Learning Community:

1. Participate directly as individuals and institutions in this learning process and assist this learning community in building sustainability in modernity by committing to be a financial benefactor of The Order of Earth/Maka Si Tomni and participate in the emerging “Advisory Council” professional activities.
2. Support the immediate funding needs of the “Little Big Horn Victory Celebration” on June 25, 2008 by generating an inspirational invitation within your professional and private social circle of influence and resources immediately.
3. Offer resources ready-at-hand and domain organizational learning expertise in exploring, researching, designing, planning, implementing this learning opportunity regarding Homo sapiens amans within the Lakota paradigm.
4. Support financially two participants in The Order of Earth / Maka Si Tomni to attend Humberto Maturana’s gathering (45 participants in Boston MA) August 4 – 10, 2008 entitled “The Great Opportunity: Cultural Biology, the End of Leadership and Emergence of Co-Inspirational Management.

I offer this creation story of the “Black Hills” as a relevant metaphor to our current human situation and mood of joyful concern I embody by knowing Lakota friends!

The Great Race Story!

The Lakota legend describes the formation of the Black Hills to the Great Race, a tremendous earth-shaking event to which all the animals of the earth were summoned for a competition to establish order out of predatory chaos. Gathering on the prairie, the animals joined in a race around a course laid out to them. The earth shuddered and groaned beneath their weight and pounding hooves until the ground subsided, causing a majestic pile of rocks to the inside of the track—Paha Sapa—the Black Hills. The blood from all the wounded feet left a band of red encircling the Hills. The Buffalo was running the fastest and as he neared the finish line, the Magpie who was riding on his back jumped off, crossed the finished line first, thus winning the race for the two-legged beings.

We have all the time in the world and not a moment to waste! The moment is now to build one sacred hoop for humanity: one skin, one blood, one family of Mankind.

Thank you for attention, time and consideration in this regard. I pray this is the beginning of a meaningful conversation and learning experience that contributes to Humberto Maturana’s endeavor to awaken the meaning of Homo sapiens amans as a new standard practice in designing our future together.

If not US, who? If not NOW, when? Let us as a learning community join together and support the Lakota Paradigm emerging in Maka Si Tomni and shift /reframe the moods of resignation and despair to a mood of joyful concern, confidence and trust in the future design of humanity! Let’s demonstrate the meaning of Homo sapiens amans in our caring, feeding and nurturing Mother Earth and it’s people as a new day arising in the midst predatory chaos, confusion and distrust. Let’s begin to be present, sing, dance and experience the heart-song of Love as “One Heart One People.”

Cordially,

Patric, Founder , The Order of Earth
Advisory Council Chairperson

Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 11:42 PM Andrew Campbell wrote:

Patric

Firstly, thank you for writing. I will spend part of my day reading and digesting its content.

Second AM de Lange is Mr. At de Lange—now retired and without Internet access.

Right now i suspect he would not follow through with your project in practicalways – i am in touch with his family through his daughter in South Africa.

Take Care,

Andrew
Oxford UK

Patric acknowledges my reply to his exploratory e-mail concerning At de Lange’s and my shared exploration into the work of Flores, Varela and Maturana. For me there comes a sense of grief at the remembrance of a great teacher. A loss to this conversation.

Andrew,

Thank you and please share my gratitude and appreciation for all of At’s writings, insights and contributions. I assess he is an amazing wise elder in our community of learning and a voice that is missed already in many conversations. I have truly appreciated everything he has written I have been able to put my hands on.

The notion of “Homo sapiens amans” is an interesting distinction to bring forth in this moment. This “Elder Loving Wisdom” is present in all domains of human activity and generational units of humanity. (It) constitutes, sustains and maintains all life! The Order of Earth’s vision and notion is to explore a “new organizational configuration” for this expression of “Wise Elder Love” that transcends orthodox traditions, political systems, religious indoctrinations, commercial standard practices and educational prejudicial explorations. A new configuration that opens “exploration” for the space of the “wind-of-elder-wisdom” to freely blow open the doors of this deep biological loving root in our nature. I see it as a volcano about to explode!

The two video’s offered “The Lakota Paradigm” and the “Encyclopedia of Life” offers a 32 minute learning experience of the notion I am pointing to as a reflection. One “elder” deeply rooted in an ancient indigenous languaging and the other elder rooted deeply in leading modern science and research as an “advocate of biodiversity.” Both ‘elders’ speaking as “Homo sapiens amans” as an “invitation-for-reflection” not a demand-for-obedience or negation-of-self! It is a unitary voice of loving joyful concern that is opening space for a new conversation of “who we are’ and “what we do.”

There is a possibility of disclosing a new community of learning platform for “elder wisdom (Homo sapiens amans)” that is not focused on gender, rulership, leadership, exclusion, appropriation, competition, aggression, arrogance, status, privilege, position, title or problem-solving endeavors. It is now possible for a “global elder communication platform” to arise operating fundamentally in “love—legitimacy-in-coexistence” and also provide a vital repository for the “wisdom of Homo sapiens amans” in this crucial moment of human unfoldment! My father “Bernard”—86 years old—has a place at the table for humanity’s future. “Elders” are the only ones in our social community that have the experience and freedom to speak without regard to conserve living any longer! They are free to share the “light of an elder sage” to the children of the world as a joyful flame in the last breath of living-in-realization! “Oh Death, where is thy Sting?”

Yesterday’s global news in the Peak Oil Crisis demonstrates how fragile and uncertain the current moment is. How the war to end all wars is now moving to energy conversation, itself. This is good news and tragic news because we are about to confront (the train hitting the ocean and the wake-up reflection) the taken-for-granted self-generated generational behaviors, standard practices of patriarchy breakdown. Simultaneously there is an opening of a new opportunity for reflection of what is missing and conversations of designing a future together addressing what is missing! This current moment is a ‘history making event’ confronting the predatory chaos of ‘Homo sapiens aggressor” and ‘Homo sapiens arrogance.’ This is a painful emotional experience and an awakening to the deeper biological fundaments of human nature.

Our future design is a matter of freedom (choice through reflection power versus social experience) in human design and the reflection on how our daily standard practices in languaging and practice is affecting and causing the the predatory chaos in globalization. Hope (mood of resignation now moving to despair) is a Christian virtue that needs to be rejected as a valid basis for any design whatsoever. WE (Homo sapiens amans) can embody and disclose moods of ‘joyful concern, confidence, trust and wonder’ as an effective action arising in “elder wisdom” enacting and disclosing the “light of an eternal flame” that is currently hidden, denied and repressed throughout the family of man. This is a “circle of fire” that once lit will never be extinguished because it is fundamental to the cognitive processes of knowing and living! It is alive in the ancestry of generational experience of humanity itself. Technology is a minor conversation in comparison.

In this post-modern period I am responsible for my “ecological footprint as a Homo sapiens amans” and, upon reflection, it is a joyful concern not a burden or problem. Today, as an expression I ride a bike and take public transportation. A self-generated change in behavior and practice as an autopoietic cognitive agent in a situation. By ‘doing’ this I embrace my social loving animal emotionally versus fearing my emotional impulses or distrusting the co-creation of a viable future! I have a mood of joyful concern about the future of humanity based on the realization of the autopoietic paradox that structural determinism points to. Everything starts with individuated realization and like a virus grows through an organic seeding person-to-person, far beyond current technological designs, far beyond our current understanding of knowledge. The flowering, flowing and presence of the “human heart” embracing living-in-realization!

Thank you for your attention and reflection in this regard. I cannot express how meaningful it is for me as an isolated voice in this experience of wilderness. I am not a professor, leader or researcher. I am someone who fell in love with autopoiese as a personal experience. My reflection is a fragile small beginning that needs care, feeding and nurturing. I live in questions, not-knowing, and wonder. For me personally I have a vision and do not consider myself a “wise elder” rather a “child waking-up” and “listening” to the pain and suffering of the human condition through direct experience with others. I desire healing, wholeness and really entrance in to a community committed to bringing forth the realization-in-living of the deep-rooted fundaments of “Homo sapiens amans” as a new co-structured standard practice. My Lakota traditional “wise” friends are few and they have the ‘viewpoint’ of a generational ancestry that is remarkable and resonates with what we are discovering about our fundamental nature as humans. And I am still outside looking in and wondering where that ‘love’ is in the world I was born into. And it is a painful experience to reflect upon!

(Pause) Patric continues:

Andrew,

I sit here crying, tears steaming down my cheeks, and wondering who we are to one another and what future is to unfold in our living together.

As for your friend At de Lange, I offer this assessment: Where does one go today, at any age, to find the stillness, silence and solitude necessary to gather the courage to speak wisdom that is waiting to be spoken in this situation? Where is the “Island of Sanity” community of support that respects “reflection” as a human “joyful concern” and process of individuated realization-in-living?—waiting patiently with an open “ear.” The gift of your friend At de Lange is his turning away from all the “shouting and rumors” in the global village! His reflection is a convergence for all of us and his voice is valued in the love you embrace and share. Maybe it is your voice he is watching, waiting on, and listening for? Maybe the “closed loop of legitimacy” is for you to inspire him to share a few more moments in his breath and another moment in dancing process of a new future he has imagined in the cocoon of his soul? Maybe he is the “Pearl of Great Price” that has an insight yet to be shared in this “Great Turning” that brings forth the “Homo sapeins amans” as a community in-the-world?” I pray so!

Finally, children already know that a new day is coming forth. In the timeless Lakota creation story based in natural law they emerged from the rocks, a cave, and a spider was their spiritual guide and mentor. They were told of their future journey and finding the “Buffalo” (brother and 1st human being) and how their people would suffer on the journey and almost all of them would die. And then a “7th Generation” would arise and lead humanity into a new way of being and living! A mature civilization! This moment is now and natural law is ever with us supporting the divine drama of realization-in-living!

The Red Nation will rise again and it shall be a blessing for a world longing for light. I see a time of seven generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at the center within you and I am in that place within me, we shall be one.

Chief Crazy Horse , 4 days before he was killed

Today is a great day and meeting a brother across the seas in a place I know not of and yet is a blessing. It inspires me to continue another moment in the wonder of who WE may become by embracing the “Biology of Love.”

In deep gratitude

Patric

The Great Race

The Lakota legend describes the formation of the Black Hills to the Great Race, a tremendous earth-shaking event to which all the animals of the earth were summoned for a competition to establish order out of predatory chaos. Gathering on the prairie, the animals joined in a race around a course laid out to them. The earth shuddered and groaned beneath their weight and pounding hooves until the ground subsided, causing a majestic pile of rocks to the inside of the track—Paha Sapa—the Black Hills. The blood from all the wounded feet left a band of red encircling the Hills. The Buffalo was running the fastest and as he neared the finish line, the Magpie who was riding on his back jumped off, crossed the finished line first, thus winning the race for the two-legged beings.

This creation story feels good to me in this moment!

patric

Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Andrew Campbell responds:

Patric,

Thanks for writing down all that you have. I have joined your small group at your web site (yesterday) and i just accepted your Facebook invitation. I don’t share much information on Facebook as’identity theft’ is now common here in the UK—leading to frauds.

I am thinking laterally now. You might be interested, at one level, to research a little about the life of an artist called Joseph Beuys—when searching Google add terms like ‘nervous breakdown’ or ‘pilot’ or ‘native people’ or ‘greenparty’ or ‘shaman’ (or Coyote)—[the reader may like to do this].

Your writing tells me, ‘indicates’ i should say, a fierce yet gentle determination.You write in great length with few errors, staying on subject—indicating alsoa keen mind—a full mind—( i suspect the balance in you is a capacity for ‘letting go’ and living in the ‘now’ or present? I don’t see any mention of higher education(University Education)—yet i get the sense you have done a lot of mature learning, especially around the topics that matter to you and your mission. Can you tell me about that, your education of yourself?

In the current paradigm i would think writing a book might be personally satisfying, but it is a heck of a project to get them ‘done’ with dust jacket on and into bookshops and more important people’s hands and then minds—so i would offer, if you have not already considered it, writing a book and publishing it in chapters as pdf downloads, avialable on a ‘dedicated’ web site.

For now i also suggest, strongly, that you Google ‘Claus Otto Scharmer’—and terms like ‘Presencing’, ‘Presence’ and add if you want ‘Maturana’ or ‘Varela’. This should offer you some insights into current connections between that way of being in the world, your work and mine. Otto knew Beuys when he was younger in Germany, as a student and activist to heal the world—in English proto languages’heal’ comes from root words of ‘whole’ and ‘holy’—maybe you already knew that?

Again, i reiterate that you make contact with Ray Harrell Evans in NY. You and the Cherokee people have common cause.

I like and appreciate your remarks to me— “The ‘guilt’ you feel is understandable and ‘not helpful’ in this endeavor. Elder wisdom is plentiful, abundant and always growing even in you at this moment. The invitation I offer you is to ‘wake-up and take-a-stand in living’ where ‘At’s’ relationshipis conserved in your own production of effective actions in this moment. Not in this mood of Christian/Patriarchal guilt ridden self-importance, rather, a mood of wonder and joyful concern for what WE can become in our realizing our own ‘self-deceptions’ in living generational patterns of behavior. I need ‘ready-at-hand Homo sapiens amans’ grabbing an oar and rowing hard to create a ‘magic ball’ that transcends the ‘gravitas of the human sitiuation’.” That’s a gift of a paragraph, if ever i received one.

Your shared mission, your ‘self’ as it has presented to me through the generosity of your writing these 24 hours, requires some digestion—reflection time at this end of the ‘wire’.

Reading what you have written about Europe, and Europeans comparing to the USA makes me ask this—do you think it’s possible there is a germ of wisdom in your remark about a new Buffalo Bill Tour and is it possible that making connections in Europe—where we are becoming very awake to the ecological disasters that are now rolling in to us—riding on delayed feedback loops from years of ravaging Nature—might prove a better fishing ground for awareness and even funding? If not funding opportunities for practical advancement for the venture you have started through your own pockets, which, i guess are now pretty empty.

There is a deep, deep alignment in what you KNOW and evidently WRITE upon, that you can DO/TALK of and what many really, really want and need to HEAR in various domains and media. One way to leverage all the resources that are not too expensive might be for me to create another web presence aimed specifically at audiences in Europe. Aimed at offering insights for the Lakota stories and tradition that is highly relevant to the decline of modernist and post modernist optimism about ‘growth’—endless (sic) food production and all the delusions we have put in front of ourselves as a society. Does that ring any bells?

I look forward to learning more.

Love,
Andrew

Patric responds:

Andrew,

I remember reading Jaworski’s book on leadership and Shell many years ago. Otto’s book on…

I do not want something from our relationship. I am totally enjoying the experience of being in love and appreciation as friends/brothers. I am interested in dancing with you in an emerging future. My caution is I cannot step into whatever world you belong and ever do it justice. At, Otto, Peter (Senge), etc. and the wonderful world of MIT is beyond my scope, competencies and praxis. I am sure everyone is wonderful and right now today I am concerned about my Lakota friends and a ride in a few days.

Patric.

Andrew responds:

Dear Patric

i thought (this) might resonate with you and our recent thought exchanges?

The Gate
Yew Tree, outside my home, possibly over a thousand years old

To reach the quality without a name we must then build a living pattern language as a gate. This quality in buildings and in towns cannot be made, but only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people, just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from the seed. The people can shape buildings for themselves, and have done it for centuries, by using languages I call pattern languages. A pattern language gives each person who uses it the power to create an infinite variety of new and unique buildings, just as his ordinary language gives him the power to create an infinite variety of sentences.
Chris Alexander

This Tree and Gate are opposite my cottage, just thirty paces from where i now sit writing—the tree is about a thousand years old, maybe more—the centre is hollowing. In another three hundred years it might regenerate into new multiple trunks, one tree many trunks. One would have to stand very still to see this. Augustine and Nietzsche both wrote about that experience. (Joseph Campbell wrote well about how the many longs to be One.) Hope you can apreciate the detail here ;- )

What is true for buildings and towns is true for people and communities—we are an architecture of light manifesting in time. nothing more and nothing less—a still point that turns…

Love,
Andrew

Patric responds:

Andrew

My assessment after stepping back from Pine Ridge is that the Lakota People and First Nations People need a safe platform in which to speak where they are accepted in respect. What is interesting is they believe they are poor and desperate, average per capita income of $4,000 per year and Pine Ridge is the poorest county in the USA. But Native Americans still control 35% of the land base with 2% of the population. Imagine the power of the elder wisdom voice in the midst of this watershed global conversation of Peak Oil, Climate Change, Extinction of Biodiversity, Population, Consumption, Entertainment and Aggression.

My writing the other day in Facebook “Hero, Friend, Elder Wisdom” was an “autopoetic-autoenthnography of elder wisdom from my personal experience” not a reliance on Lakota insights. How do we create a robust, self-generated, social conversation and learning platform to further the notion of a “Homo sapiens amans” human community? How can we apply technological assets to investigate, research, collaborate and manage a global inquiry, conversation and living repository for elder wisdom? I offer the following possible design features.

1st, what is really powerful about Flores, Maturana and Verela insights and articulation is they are based in the knowledge and knowing of human expertise as a standard practice in living experience, not a theory. Every human being’s experience is respected, valued and legitimate and ‘blind points’ in experience are explored as an open reflection of the ‘observer.’ In all my contacts and reading ‘I’ was always approached in the circularity of autopoiese as the expert capable of reflecting and distinguishing my ‘blind spot’ and ‘change human behavior’ in my living praxis. I assess this is very important in regards to learning, because the viewpoint starts from the “biological cognitive foundation” of Homo sapiens amans. The social learning process is more of a listening and dance within one’s virtual identity to a new experience of plasticity in praxis of living, self-directed.

2nd, I have always been surprised that the new awarenesses of this Biology of Love has been a hidden discourse in modernity while it is so relevant to historical conservation and effective actions to permanent human concerns present. My assessment is the social technological platform now has the capacity to launch this learning experience of “elder wisdom.” And what is elder wisdom? Is it dependent on age, culture or traditions? No, elder wisdom is a mood of wonder open to the ‘Homo sapiens amans’ that is in every human architecture and daily experience. The breakdowns we are currently encountering in our situation cannot be addressed and managed by the Cartesian Newtonian Mechanistic paradigm of duality. Our hearts’ generational conservative desire is to ‘live another day’ and the only way that is opening is to become ‘conscious’ of what unites humanity not what divides us. We are facing ‘emotional contradictions’ between basic expertise in human experience in social relations and patriarchal culture based in exclusion, appropriation and aggression. I offer that the Peak Oil Crisis reflection is a breakdown that opens an opportunity to re-design past cultural patterns that invoke a praxis in living where Homo sapiens amans arises in the realization-of-living designing a world together based in social relations versus power.

3rd, the work of Flores and Winograd in “Understanding Computers and Cognition: a Foundation for a New Design” is relevant as a basic platform for coordinating identity, learning, research, and human commitment in this endeavor. Homo sapiens amans is not an interior realization sitting on a pillow. It is an emotioning of effective actions in multiple domains of human activity simultaneously sharing a consensual standard practice of legitimacy-in-coexistence. The new standard practice we can agree to is, “I invite/request/offer X by Y and I promise X by Y!” Building trust as a human community in the activities of redesigning the cultural patterns of patriarchy in a mood of joyful concern. The mood of joyful concern arises when every individual has the capacity to say ‘no’ to any invite/request/offer as a legitimate other enacting human commitment in the concerns we share. When the ‘virtual self’ is no longer negated by demanding obedience the joyfulness of one’s commitment in the praxis of living is a conscious commitment capable of transforming the patterns of cultural patriarchy.

I appreciated your sharing the story of your brother yesterday. I wonder about suicide and I do not believe it is a moral issue. I see it as a mood of resignation and despair where there is no future for effective action. Suicide is rampant on the reservations. Young people are confused because they are being forced to accept the melting pot. Islamic people are being forced to accept ‘occidental’ culture as the only future. This is why the ride at little big horn is important, it is an opportunity for elders and children to reconnect in happiness with who they are and horses as a praxis of living.

Thanks for continuing the exploration.

Love

patric

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 2:13 PM, Andrew Campbell:

In a recent scenario session I co-hosted in Europe i said, “We need to capture trust more than we need to capture CO2.”

The PowerPoint (you sent me) was hard to follow, i am not trained in those kinds of corporate communication (feedback diagrams) but i got the sense of it. (Commercially

A picture is emerging—this’technology’ stops the ‘waste’ that always exists (gets created) when people undertake to work with each other (doing) in what are always’complex situations’—which is often why they (as systems) fall into entropy and ineffectiveness—lots of talk and not so much effective walk?

Is that it …in a nutshell?

Love,
Andrew

Patric replied:

Andrew,

1) We share a biological universe with all other living systems in the web of life. It is dynamic E=MC2. There is’just one’ biological culture in the praxis of living and as we can ‘see’ it is operating perfectly already always in structural determinism. Everthing in the universe is living. Check out A View from the Center of the Universe, Primack and Abrams.

2) Birds live in the medium of air, fish live in the medium of water, and ‘homo sapiens amans’ live in the medium of language. Language is our “teeth” and “claws” in modernity: aggressor, arrogant. Our virtual identities and all ‘coordinations of coordinations’ occur in language. Language is what makes us human. Dogs share a consensual co-structured communicative coupling in our praxis of living: the biology of love with humans and dogs are ‘never late for a meeting!’ Human suffering is a ‘linguistic experience’ not ‘biological.’

When you take your seat seriously in a Zen Buddhist Retreat there is no instruction. It is an act of death and starvation of the ‘monkey mind’ and the mind goes absolutely ‘crazy’ and it wants to ‘jump out of the body, run, run and run.’ Everyone who takes their seat as ‘homo sapiens amans’ will face this terror of ‘mental suffering encountering self-deceptive belief systems operating secretly with hidden agendas’ and it is extremely difficult and sometimes painful. And through the practice, in-a-moment-all of a sudden like a ‘balloon under water—pop’—and pain/body/mind completely disappears, vanishes, and an imperturable transmission (presence/peace/relaxation) arises that has no deffinition, no content, no form, void, emptyness. The ‘observer’ (virtual identity) is freed from its’biological felt-sense’ of self-importance, self-guilt, self-absorption, self-fixation and self-worry, others-worry, any-worry about past, present or future. A direct experience of momentariness arises in the cognition of the ‘observer’ as being in temporal existence, present in the moment. Everything is possible and the ‘observer’ is one with the universe.

3) Then you get up from the seat and enter an already network of conversations, discourses, breakdowns in human co-structured standard practices = “culture.” These cultural traditions are ‘ways of seeing’ ‘ways of being’ operating in blindness to the ‘monkey mind’ creations over generations. They are the ‘shadows’ on Plato’s cave entertaining the belief in a dualistic universe or maybe offering meaningful myths within the shadow cave. These myths are generational, passed from elders to children: a certainty about life to be obeyed and that never will be challenged.

4) The ‘wake-up’ is, “Language is not a descriptive phenomena of an objective reality (although we use it that way daily in argument, aggression, arrogance, because we are operating in blindness). Language is a generative phenomena of the reality we desire to experience.” George Bush is an excellent example: “There is an axis of evil in the world and I declare World War III on this axis of evil.” There is’no reality’ independent of the ‘observer.’ And the argument that George Bush makes is there is an ‘independent transcedental objective reality operating where his responsibility as an observer is irrelevant.’ Like a child the first act of self-deception: “I didn’t do it.” I assess this as why Humberto and Francisco autopoietic notion is difficult to embrace; once you do, you are responsible for living and reality. Oucchhhh! That’s a little painful. We live in a romantic notion that there is a purpose, meaning and gods and ghosts in all these generational myths that have arisen in the cave experience of duality. Good and Evil, Life and Death, Right and Wrong, Black and White etc. And now we are like rats in a cage tearing each other apart, a plague!

5) The new standard practice i/we am/are pointing to is, I am aware as an observer. I live in language and it constitutes, sustains and maintains my identity and the act of building trust in all the domains of permanent human concerns that I constitute in my praxis of living. I am now an ‘observer’ (reflective-self responsible for the decisions, choices, commitments I choose freely in languaging) of the ‘observer living in objectivity’ (the taken-for-granted traditions, orthodoxy, standard practices, transcendental authorities: god, myths, religion, government, science, race, gender, position, status, title etc). Now in this new awareness I am responsible for the choices I make in languaging and am willing to experience the consequences in public (with others) as a ‘virtual identity.’

6) My human commitments are ‘generative creations, inventions and realities’ that I consciously create in the act of living in legitimacy-in-coexistence with others by designing mutually agreed upon conditions-of-satisfaction in the praxis of living. This’universal production cycle’ has been operating throughout all time and has created my current situation as an ‘observer.’ Now I can live in responsibility and freedom. Every invitation, request and offer I ‘utter—bring forth’ has a drop of invention in creating my world in mutual agreement with others. Any ‘demand-for-obedience’ on another is an act of negation, negation of my self and the other as legitimate-in-coexistence. So I live in a mood of joyful concern. “I invent (invite/request/offer) X by Y and I Promise (Promises constitute my identity to the social community in which i belong or desire to coordinate with) X by Y.” No is not a rejection of self or my creation I am bringing forth; it is declining to commit to the action or condition of satisfaction for the other.

7) Since Homo sapiens amans arose in a biology of knowing and a biology of love ‘communicative competence’ is a praxis in living in languaging where language is no longer taken-for-granted as a ‘descriptive cartesian mechanistic’ explanation for ‘reality.’ Languaging is embraced as an emotioning of effective actions in human commitments to permanent human concerns and historic discourses that constitute human existence and it is a wonderous, confident, joyous experience with others because we build ‘trust’ in the basic ethical act of coexistence with one another.

8) I request X by Y and I promise X by Y is never really seen or appreciated because of its famililarity in our historic consensual co-structured standard practices. This simple new standard practice is relevant to all of humanity, can easily be understood, and the praxis in living brings forth happiness in our living together immediately. Our problem is we are living in languaging either as’shallow’ interpretations or ‘criminal’ intentions and this is why our world is suffering today.

On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 12:47 PM, Andrew Campbell:

Here is a fragement of what i have been writing—in my imagination i am connecting the Black people of South Africa (see last pages as a project to bring an isolated community life through water ;- )—plus our work—so to try and explain that (if only to myself in the current draft i have written about change in conservation). Please improve or correct or suggest better explanation.

(Love, Andrew)

continuing –

Or comes, like sunburst out of clouds, a deed out of thoughts?

“Oder kommt, wie der Strahl aus dem Gewölke kommt, Aus Gedanken die Tat?”
Friedrich Hölderlin

Of Rainmakers and the Sorrowings

I have spent the last year learning about Futurists and Scenarios with Napier Collyns, one of the co-founders of GBN [Global Business Network]. He owns one of my paintings. He was taught by Pierre Wack. One of Pierre Wack’s iconoclastic beliefs was in putting a premium on listening to heretics—whom he called “remarkable people.” In this view, “all the statistical data in the world is of less value than a bracing afternoon with an outcast, renegade, a nonlinear thinker.”

[Example of Futurist thinking that may be of interest]—A “long fuse, big bang” problem is when whatever you decide to do will play out with a big bang—often a life or death difference to an organization (any living system)—but it can take years to learn whether your decision was wise or not. Worse yet, “long fuse, big bang” questions don’t lend themselves to traditional analysis; it’s simply impossible to research away the uncertainties on which the success of a key decision will hang.

In the Llano de Sandia in New Mexico, the Los Pinos Mountains are about 9,000 feet high while the area below in which the river runs is at an elevation of about 4,800 feet. About a mile separates the mountains from the river. Precipitation in these mountains doesn’t all run downslope, nor does it all seep into the mountains. Some of the water goes deep into fractured rocks beneath the mountains. “The time between rainfall on the mountains and ultimate recharging of the riverine water table is about 50 years,” says Duffy. “The seven-year, 1950s drought in the area is what is now affecting the Rio Grande and the water table.”

Developers of New Mexico’s mountains and bajada regions need to consider a longer time horizon than a decade when planning to alter the natural environment. It may require a forward view of tens of decades to ensure sustainability. Even if no obvious year-round streams run from the mountains, they are still very important for the recharge of the water table and river.

(Moving to something Maturana wrote), “The recovery of history is for them the very means to self recovery and perhaps our very conservation as a species. This man and I enter into conversation grounded in a way of living brilliantly expounded by Maturana.”—“The path that the living of an organism follows is defined always by its preferences and habits in the conservation of well-being. Hence, the course that the history of living systems follows, and the course that the history of human beings follows arises defined by what is being lived in the present and not by what may be the possible consequences in the future.”—”What is special about us human beings is that we are animals that are the present of a lineage of bipedal primates that followed an evolutionary path of transformations and change centred around the conservation of a loving manner of living in the intimacy of sharing food, tenderness, and collaboration. “—(and tellingly in our age of fear, collapse, anger, greed, starvation, brutality, pornography). “I think that the human lineage began in that historical process as a manner of living in the conservation of living in languaging and that the basic emotion whose conservation made this possible is love. So I like to call our original ancestor, and the fundamental manner of living still conserved in the present of our lineage, Homo sapiens-amans amans. Yet, I also think, that in the long history of our human lineage many branches must have arisen, and are still arising, in which other emotions have become central as guiding emotions in our community living obscuring or replacing love, creating other branching lineages many of which became extinct. I think, for example, that there are two other human forms that are slowly arising in our present, namely Homo sapiens-amans arrogans, and Homo sapiens-amans agressans.”

In short this man and I are exploring through ourselves the grounds of our being through the becomings of conversation.

Love,
Andrew

Patric responds:

Andrew,

Beautiful! I wonder (awe) where this conversation of becoming will lead us! As I view our circumstances I see so much chaos, confusion and distrust in all the domains of human organizations. The economic, military and political powers in the situation are overwhelming. And it appears that there is’no time’ for human sensibilities to find the space for reflection and re-articulate, cross-appropriate or re-configure technological standard practices. I feel resigned today to the ever-narrowing inferno of modernity.

Yet, your words and relationship inspire me to continue and explore once again what is possible through conversations of becoming with one another.

Thank you,
love
Patric

Andrew responds:

Patric,

You wrote, “I feel like an edge walker between worlds belonging to neither and in an autopoietic sense living in a crazy notion. Because it breaks the transparencies of structural coupling with the medium in which I have parachuted into.”

Circa 2004

Dear Otto,

Splits give rise to blooms, blooms give rise to our perceptions of realities and realities give rise to love.
Love, Andrew

Andrew – so, what is it you are saying: that we (you) are staying in (on the ground of?) the split rather than on one of the two sides?

Otto

Yes! ( = love 😉

Andrew

Thanks Andrew. That’s great. and clear.

Otto

Love,

Andrew

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 11:58 PM, Andrew Campbell:

When i first saw this picture a few days ago i was frozen. The only comfort that i took was that the boy was encompassed between the legs of a man i presumed his father or a relative, or at least his guardian. Then this morning or late last night i realised that the leg on either side belongs to different men, if you notice their big toes. Then my compassion was increased untold times—and then an ephiphany of kinds. This little boy is no more disconnected from his world and life than almost every single person on Facebook or who puts a picture onto Flickr. In his fearful symmetry i was reminded of some of Blake’s Angels—which took my mind to Bateson…and thence to

“…An organization’s culture cannot be fully understood by the organizational members immersed in its life, for their attempts to see their own culture will be through the lenses that are also the culture, or as the Chinese proverb so beautifully puts it: ‘The last one to know about the sea is the fish.”

It is also impossible for an outsider to see and understand the culture, as the culture is communicated differently to outsiders than insiders and the richness of the culture has to be experienced through deep participation.

To overcome this paradox culture requires a rigorous discipline of action research that combines both internal and external perspectives and transcends the limitations of both through a process of dialogue and challenge between different system positions. This process is supported by the methodology, tools and approaches of action research that combine what has been described as third-person, second-person and first-person research.

First-person action research/practice skills and methods address the ability of the researcher to foster an inquiring approach to his or her own life.

Second person action research/practice addresses our ability to inquire face-to-face with others into issues of mutual concern. Third person strategies aim to create a wider community of inquiry. The most compelling and enduring kind of action research will engage all three strategies

Third-person research can help us look at the patterns of language, story, behaviour, activity, emotions and relationships that shape the flow of organizational life.

First-person action research can help us move from immersion in the organizational culture back into structured personal reflection on how that culture has impacted our own being. For what a culture can not directly tell you, it communicates through your emotional experience as you engage with it. This movement from action to reflection requires structured approaches and methods, whether drawn from phenomenology and psychodrama, psychotherapy or shadow consultancy.

Second-person research can help in providing a joint space where insiders and outsiders can collaborate together to help the insiders become ‘flying fish’ and freshly perceive the sea they are swimming in and the outsiders to more fully experience the cultural impact. This form of action research can also be greatly enhanced by using tools and methods that enable the culture to enact and exemplify itself, such as storytelling, use of drawing or enacting the unwritten induction with the rules of ‘What everybody needs to know to flourish around here, but nobody will tell them directly’. It is often through the medium of aesthetic representation in art, drama, music, etc. that a culture can be more fully expressed and empathetically appreciated. This is a notion that Bateson held dear throughout his working life, from his early studies of the Iatmul people in New Guinea and his art collections and photographs from Bali to his late conversations with his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson. See also Style, Grace and Primitive Art and A Theory of Play and Fantasy. Bateson distinguished between: what he termed ‘zero learning’, the acquisition of data or information that does not create a difference or change. (All Bateson materials above and below from this paper:

A centennial tribute to Gregory Bateson 1904–1980 and his influence on the fields of organizational development and action research by Peter Hawkins Bath Consultancy Group Action Research Volume 2(4): 409–423 Copyright© 2004 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/ 1476750304047984)

‘Learning I’, in which skill learning is acquired through trial and error selection of a possibility within a set of options; and

‘Learning II’, where second order or double loop learning occurs through shifting the frame or set in which one is making level one choices.

These ‘distinctions’ have become central to understanding not only different orders of individual learning, but also the distinctions between operational learning and strategic learning in the life of the organization. In knowledge management it has become central to understanding the distinctions between data, information, knowledge and understanding. However, in the pursuit of knowledge management many organizations have ended up with growing their data warehousing to the extent that it drowns out information, or have created information overload in a way that suppresses the creation of new knowledge. This echoes the sentiment of T. S. Eliot who wrote in ‘ The Rock‘: Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The development of double loop learning and organizational understanding is constrained by the lack of wisdom and what Bateson termed ‘Learning III’. For double loop learning to be enabled there is a need for level three or treble loop learning in organizations.

It was not until 1971, seven years after he originally wrote the paper, that Bateson revised his theory to include Learning III. This is defined by Bateson as’Change in the process of Learning II, e.g., a corrective change in the system of sets of alternatives from which choice is made’.

Learning III is difficult to understand, and has often been misunderstood by other writers. This is probably inevitable, for, as Bateson points out, “Learning III is likely to be rare even in human beings”. Learning III involves a transcendence of the ego-world, where experience is orientated to and made sense of through some rational self—’what I call my character’. Thus it is the realm which, according to Wilber, can be talked of only in symbolic, mandalic and paradoxical language.

According to Bateson, ‘”[T]o the degree that a man achieves Learning III…his self will take on a sort of irrelevance. The concept of self will no longer function as a nodal argument in the punctuation of experience.”

If, as a prerequisite to Learning II, I have developed the ability to shift the framework within which I am making choices, then a prerequisite to Learning III must be the ability to shift the underlying premises and belief systems that form these frameworks.

Bateson’s references to the transpersonal dimension of Learning III are elliptical with references to a Zen master he once heard and the writings of the visionary mystic Blake of whom he said: “He knew more about what it is to be human than any other man”. Despite this tangential linking, the implication that Learning III involves a shift to spiritual and transpersonal realm is clearly there, for, as Bateson explains, Learning III is:

…a world in which personal identity merges into all the processes of relationship in some vast ecology or aesthetics of cosmic interaction. That any of these [people] can survive seems almost miraculous, but some are perhaps saved from being swept away on oceanic feeling by their ability to focus on the minutiae of life. Every detail of the universe is seen as proposing a view of the whole.

But he also writes: “[C]ertainly it must lead to a greater flexibility in the premises acquired by the process of Learning II—a freedom from their bondage…but any freedom from bondage of habit must also denote a profound redefinition of self.”

What seems crucial in understanding this distinction between Learning II and Learning III is that the latter occurs when the person cannot replace one underlying framework by which he lives with another—for example, deciding to quit being a Christian and to become a Buddhist; or to quit being an alcoholic and become an ex-alcoholic—but must also be aware that both these paradigms or worldviews are systems, frameworks, or spectacles through which we view the world. It is when we are able truly to let them go that we enter the domain of Learning III. The person has to let go of self-definition as an ex-Christian or as a Buddhist and embrace a sense of self which is non-definitional in terms of either outward characteristics or frameworks of belief.

That said, I suggest there are two ways of thinking about Learning Ill, one more helpful in everyday life than the other:
One way is to follow the implications in Bateson that Learning III is a state of enlightenment, attained by only a few, such as Sufi or Zen masters, or Castaneda’s Don Juan. The other more useful way of viewing this level is that it provides temporary access to a higher logical level of awareness where we have the space to become free enough of our normal perspectives and paradigm constraints to see through them rather than with them and thus create the space to change them. By definition, it is possible to change the way one double-loop learns only if there is some temporary access to Learning Ill, for it is spiritual learning in worldly organisations, rather than Ashrams, which is the focus.

By the 1960s and 1970s Bateson had become one of the first powerful voices to speak about the developing ecological crisis facing our planet. Some time before other commentators, he showed how our current environmental crisis is rooted in our epistemological mind sets.

Bateson writes about our epistemological errors, which he describes as “the ideas that dominate our civilization at the present time date in their most virulent form from the industrial revolution.” Bateson also shows how these beliefs are rooted in a theology that separates God from Creation and creates a merely transcendent God separate from Nature:

If you put God outside and set him vis-à-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore as not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will be yours to exploit…If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of over population and over-grazing.

If we now revisit each of these false and dangerous beliefs we can look at what we would put alongside them as an antidote or cure, that would help us overcome the human/nature dualism. You might at this point like to write your own antidotes for each of the Bateson statements before comparing them with the ones that I have written below:.

a) It’s us against the environment.
We and what we call environment are interdependent.

b) It’s us against other men.
Win-lose always becomes lose-lose.

c) It’s the individual (or the individual company, or the individual nation) that matters.
The unit of survival is organism plus environment. We are learning by bitterexperience that the organism that destroys its environment destroys itself.

d) We can have unilateral control over the environment and must strive for that control.
Nature was before, will be after and is greater than that small part of itthat is human beings.

e) We live in an infinitely expanding ‘frontier’.
There are limits to growth.

f) Economic determinism is common sense.
90% of what is most important cannot be measured by economics. Money as the measure of all things actually serves to impoverish us all.

g) Technology will do it for us.
Technology, on its own, will merely accentuate our own abilities to destroy our selves and our environment. You can not solve a problem from within the thinking that created it.

Bateson writes very clearly of the problems we have created by choosing thewrong unit of survival.

In accordance with the general climate of thinking in mid nineteenth century England, Darwin proposed a theory of natural selection and evolution, in which the unit of survival was either the family line or species of sub-species or something of that sort. But today it is quite obvious that this is not the unit of survival in the real biological world. The unit of survival is organism plus environment. We are learning by bitter experience that the organism that destroys its environment destroys itself.

We have to move from just fighting for saving this species or that, to working with the preservation and development of living ecologies; from thinking of the environment as a thing, to seeing that it is a complex web of connections; from seeing it as other to experiencing it as part of us. There is no self, no nature, only nature self.

Conclusion: a Participative World View

As Bateson writes, “The most urgent task is to ‘think anew’, but thinking is not enough. The most urgent task is to connect anew, to connect in the world through what a number of people are describing as a ‘participative consciousness’.”

Reason writes: we can only understand our world as a whole if we are part of it; as soon as we attempt to stand outside, we divide and separate. In contrast, making whole necessarily implies participation: one characteristic of a participative worldview is that the individual person is restored to the circle of community and the human community to the context of the wider natural world.

I was recently inspired to return to an in-depth reading of Bateson by reading the doctoral thesis of Noel CharIton entitled A Sacred World: The Ecology of Mind, Aesthetics and Grace in the Thought of Gregory Bateson. I was fascinated by his references to Bateson’s use of the term ‘Grace’. In Steps to the Ecology of Mind, Bateson writes, “Aldous Huxley used to say that the central problem for humanity is the quest for grace.” He goes on to define Huxley’s notion of grace as a quality that many animals have of being able to exhibit ‘a naiveté, a simplicity—which man has lost—characterized by a lack of self-deceit and a harmony of movement.

This is a different use of the term ‘Grace’ from the religious notion of grace found in both the Christian and Islamic traditions where grace is seen as an unearned gift or benefit from God. However, the two notions dovetail beautifully in a systemic perspective. The more we align and are in service to the greater systemic whole, then the more graceful and harmonious are we in our own living and movement. Internal harmony is only possible when there is harmony in the collective circuits of mind and in the wider ecology. Only when we live gracefully in service of the greater system of which we are part do we receive the grace of beneficence bestowed from the greater system on its parts.

Bateson’s ultimate search was for a fundamental belief system that would help us live more fully, more harmoniously and more appropriately in and with our fragile world. The new paradigm had to be ‘neither supernatural nor mechanical’, for both positivistic science and religious dogma have led us to an alienated existence tottering on the edge of ecological disaster.

At the end of his life he wrote:

I find myself still between the Scylla of established materialism, with its quantitative thinking, applied science, and ‘controlled’ experiments on one side, and the Charybdis of romantic supernaturalism on the other. My task is to explore whether there is a sane and valid place for religion somewhere between these two nightmares of nonsense. Whether, if neither muddleheadedness, nor hypocrisy is necessary to religion, there might be found in knowledge and in art the basis to support an affirmation of the sacred that would celebrate natural unity.

Love,
Andrew

Patric responds:

Andrew,

It is wonderful that your spirit is soaring in exploration and creativity. Did you know that Bateson, Maturana and Flores met yearly for a number of years during the summer, I believe in Boulder, Colorado. It was I believe an open conversation and few people attended but they speculated with one another.

This idea of the ‘Fly Fishing’ is interesting. I was at a sacred masculine initiation in 2000 and I had gotten up early in the morning to see the sunrise and was sitting on a dock in a state of contemplation. I was contemplating living in nature consciously and seeing it as a like an implosion plutonian reactor for realization-in-living for humanity and the earth. No definition, no identity, no words, just being in nature and experiencing ‘what is’ Is-ing with nature. While sitting on the dock in front of a beautiful small pond a bird started flying around my head and a fish started jumping out of the pond right in front of me. Participatory learning experience in nature itself.

Today as I reflect on the experience I see that it is the ‘Biology of Love’ embedded in the hard-wired ‘meta genetic roots’ of our nature that provides this experience of wisdom naturally in living. Trusting the universe and life we love to experience in the moment.

Our conversation of becoming is interesting because no matter how talentedthe ‘flying fish’ may be it needs to be seen, conversed with, and reflected upon by others who can see the experience and value it. Your assessments, suggestions, questions, and confirmations are assisting me in ‘feeling’ the freedom and beauty of ‘who I am.’ Your relationship (seeing, conversation, passion) right now opens up space for the ‘flying’ to be the right of consciousness in this moment of existence. One is only crazy when they have a interpretation of reality that is contrary to the structured culture one is embedded in. What Maturana and Verela gave me many years ago was the freedom to be autopoietic as an “observer of the observer” as a stance in consciousness interpreting human experience in the moment. It has been a ‘character building experience.’

The ‘fying fish character’ has’blind spots’ and one of the most amazing points of this third loop is the loss of ‘self-importance, self-preservation, self-identity’ as a construct to generate, maintain or sustain. The stripping of a notion of a ‘transcendental locus of control or stability’ is a crazy notion to explore. And the experience ‘opens an experience’ of momentariness where there are no beliefs, NO MIND, and human experience in all its terror, chaos, confusion and beauty of flying like a Monarch Butterfly.

My Dharma name was given to me in the Hollow Bones Order is Mushin, the 1st Sensei of the Mankind Project. I do not know what this means; it was an experience to discover. Mushin means “No/Know Mind.” Most people who know me would agree that ‘Patric’ is crazy. ‘Flying Fish’ is a crazy experience to behold and fear is one of the reactions one can have when you leave the ‘medium’ and find ‘freedom.’ What I am happy about in this moment is that I feel I am beginning to enter into experience with a host of ‘flying fish’ through you.Your ‘seeing’, ‘feeling’, ‘sensing’ is an artistic dance on the pond of my existence and blessing in swimming through today in a new way. I am eternally grateful and can’t wait to visit Europe and meet you in your Garden of Eden.

Love=Legitimacy-in-coexistence=flying fish
Patric

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Andrew Campbell:

Patric,

Patric, you wrote, “1st, being present in your sit-u-ate-ness is always a suspension of ‘egoic self-referencing of self-identities, importance, guilt and deception’”.

You wrote:

A cognitive entity enters into direct experience of being human in present moments that are transformative to a previous point-of-view and in doing so no longer is reactive to the situation emerging in the medium. The imperturable deep hard-wired biological meta genetic wisdom (sensing) ‘heart-felt-sense’ emerges as an ‘observer of the observer.’ The crown of the creative generative principle ‘refection’ in the universe emerges as an ‘autopoietic experience’ behind the dance of all the virtual identities that constitute, sustain and maintain the notion of ‘self.’ The ‘monkey mind’ based in dualistic emotional contradictions is calmed down, peace is instant, and an inner world emerges in silence, secrecy and solitude that is forever beyond thinking, thoughts, words, and action.

The Many that comprise any fragmented one becomes><transforms into a One among the many fragments. Evolution is increasing Wholeness.

You also wrote,

One is home at the center-of-the-universe and connected with ALL LIFE. The ‘autopoietic paradox’ is experienced directly as a human being. Realization-in-living is not a theory, concept, striving it is a releasing of the monkey mind fixated memory of emotional contradictions to experience ‘what is’ in direct cognitive experience as a human being. From this’zero point’ there is no memory, no future or past, one is present in the momentariness fully, completely and has no definition. The 10,000 virtual identities that are singing, dancing and screaming in the ‘collective consciousness of humanity in ignorance’ are embraced in compassion and the learning hence forth in bringing forth a world is’developing skillful means’ in service. Everything is already always perfect!

I choose to home in on the phrase “From this’zero point’ there is no memory, no future or past, one is present in the momentariness fully, completely and has no definition.” Please navigate to
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2006/04/26.html,
then http://www.community-intelligence.com/blogs/public/2006/08/chance_and_choice_experiences.html.

Then you wrote,

The creative generative principle that constitutes, sustains and maintains All Life does not make junk, rather a ‘Biology of Love’ where legitimacy-in-coexistence is ethically experienced moment-to-moment in presencing with one another. In the experience of this’autopoietic paradox’ a realization-in-living from the deep rooted biological understanding of Homo sapiens amans there is no ruler/ruled, leaders/followers, laws/criminals, rich/poor, life/death there is the experience of being present in-the-moment as the eternal infinite reality of beingness itself in the action of creation. Possibilities are beyond our imagination as we embrace our role in creation at the center of conscious reflection within creation. The mystery of living becomes a new ethical behavior of having legitimacy-in-coexistence for the presence of another in the heart-felt-sense constituting human nature itself. The biology is love is realized in living and designing a world together. Everyone has a part to play and every child born in this world is appreciated, nurtured and cared for by the entire global village.

To which I offer (this passage), from an Illuminated Essay:

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; before thou camest forth out of
the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
Then said I, Ah, Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak; for I am a child. But the
Lord said unto me; Say not, I am a child…

King James Bible, The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah

Sometimes I work with people and they bring their children along—there has been a pattern on these occasions that takes me back to William Blake—they often send or give me pictures that they themselves have made, these often—invariably—contain images of angels.

Blake had been reading an edition of Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, which he had agreed to illustrate, and had come to a passage in which the poet asks’who can paint an angel?’ Blake closed the book, according to his own account, and spoke aloud.

Blake: Aye! Who can paint an angel?
Voice: Michel Angelo could.
He looked about the room but noticed nothing ‘save a greater light than usual’.
Blake: And how do you know?
Voice: I know, for I sat for him; I am the arch-angel Gabriel.
Blake: Oho! You are—are you? I must have a better assurance than that of a wandering voice; you may be an evil spirit—there are such in this land.
Voice: You shall have good assurance. Can an evil spirit do this?
Blake looked whence the voice came, and was then aware of a shining shape, with
bright wings, which diffused much light. “As I looked, the shape dilated more and
more; he waved his hands and the roof of my study opened; he ascended into
heaven; he stood in the sun, and beckoning me, moved the universe. An angel of evil
could not have done that—it was the arch-angel Gabriel.

The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes 1975 Oxford Literary Press Edited by James Sutherland

So in his study, in his house in Lambeth, Blake saw an angel stand in the sun and move the universe. How different would our world be if we attended more to angels?

You wrote,

My attention as an “observer” throughout my life has been to experience the ‘golden thread’ that runs through every discourse (Education, Religion, Science, Commerce) I have explored in conversations, experienced in practice and participated in living. I am a generalist with no specialization. I am very careful and circumspect about ever presenting myself as a Lakota or First Nations person. The reason is that most of what has been said and shared about ‘First Nations’ peoples has been published by ‘non-Indians’ anthropology or religious mind-sets, and ‘First Nations’ peoples are sensitive to this exploitation that has occurred over the years—non-Indians defining and speaking for them; there is resentment even if never communicated. My stance is appreciated by them because I am clear about being a friend, laugh with them and share the prayers, eating and riding as legitimate another and not a ‘wanna be Lakota non-Indian.’ Even in Fools Crow written by Thomas Mails who was able to translate ‘Lakota’ language and share this medicine man’s experiences, something is lost in the translation and Mel Lone Hill ‘knows’ it, resents it and it has never spoken about. These people have been ‘invisable’ because they were committed to conserve a matter of the heart’s desire that was generational. Throughout the generations that preceded them ‘silence, stillness, solitude’ was the center from which their social network operated in natural law. They had no ‘ideological’ rules, coming together at the family altar was appreciative, praying, singing, dancing and laughing; a joyful concern! I want my Lakota friends to speak for themselves in real-time and pure play. I want my friends to be invited into gatherings where non-Indians experience and learn the meaning of social relations in real-time pure-play natural law. Maybe the distinctions experience shifts in the observer’s view-point to a new possible paradigm, way of being and living, not as a Lakota but as a German or American. And I offer that my grounding of this experience in ‘biological awarenesses’ is part of the ‘magic ball in inventing the new 21st century university’ and ‘income producing stream of elder wisdom for new teachers who need sustained’ in presencing what we are seeking to bring forth.

Patric writes back (In closing:)

I have many thoughts swimming in my body regards the deep excavation happening in this conversation of becoming with you. Yesterday in reading Otto’s paper, I made notes to reflect and comment on. I want to review his dialog with Verela/Otto and I want to integrate ‘Blind Spot of Leadership’ [ www.dialogonleadership.org] in the autopoietic understanding within my own experience and not outside languages, cultures, traditions and ideologies, and they are reference points in the blueprint of my own experience as an autopoietic being in consciousness. Possibly in beginning the research project maybe Verela was pointing to in cognitive science regarding experience and open an invitation to others to explore the autopoietic paradox. I want to authentically share the ’emotional contradictions’ ‘breakdowns’ and ‘breakthroughs’ in the drawing you offer in the conversation of ‘zero point’ and ‘Blind Spot in Leadership.’ And from this new configuration of identity begin to design the next effective actions to bring forth the ‘participative order and freedom’ you have pointed to with other explorers.

I am beginning to ‘see’ why very few people embrace the biological depth of Maturana and Verela experience in real life and can end up ill, isolated and insane. I am ‘dependent’ as a ‘closed system’ on maintaining a ‘co-structured coupling’ in the medium. Without that ‘co-structured coupling’ the cognitive agent ‘breakdowns’ and separates from the medium and dies. All the great poets, actors, artists, musicians who have been ‘edge walkers’ between worlds attempting to bring forth this reflection of ‘imperturable non-deffinition’ in beauty have suffered a separation from the medium: crucifixions, shame, alienation, humiliation and the ‘fragility as an observer’ perceiving something beyond the agreed upon co-structured coupled interpretation within a unit of humanity. And now the culture itself is sick and dying. I want to be a successful ‘social entrepreneur’ in building the social network where I can flourish in the future in a community of Homo sapiens amans and not ‘die’ in the experience of breaking away from the emotional contradictions in the medium of modernity. This is the challenge and opportunity I see before me in this situation. Your participation is a gift beyond words and point of reconfiguration personally. Thank you.

I intend to write over the weekend in regards to Otto’s’Blind Spot of Leadership’ from the perspective of a ‘Nameless Wanderer.’ My identity is not important and the insights into the biological fundaments and breakdowns in emotioning within the systemic ’emotional contradictions’ arising within the medium are. This is where realization occurs and behaviors can be re-configured for Home sapiens amans, starting with Patric. One person at a time and every human being becoming a leader in the co-inspirational management of cultural biology. Family, Education, Government, Religion, Commerce is happening in embodied biological awareness’s and the reflective act is the crown of realization in our individuated and collective experience in living. It is what we have done throughout the conservation of living (history) in every unit of humanity; it is what we are doing today with one another in our struggles individually and collectively; and it is what we will be doing millions of years from now. Reflection is a cognitive action of being that happens in the moment and is eternal and infinite in its context. To manage the ‘dragon on threshold—self importance’ will take everyone of us being responsible for the autopoietic experience from the heart in presence.

Love,
Patric

On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Andrew Campbell (sent a passage from Black Elk Speaks):

Crazy Horse’s father was my father’s cousin, and there were no chiefs in our family before Crazy Horse; but there were holy men; and he became a chief because of the power he got in a vision when he was a boy. When I was a man, my father told me something about that vision. Of course he did not know all of it; but he said that Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world. He was on his horse in that world, and the horse and himself on it and the trees and the grass and the stones and everything were made of spirit, and nothing was hard, and everything seemed to float. His horse was standing still there, and yet it danced around like a horse made only of shadow, and that is how he got his name, which does not mean that his horse was crazy or wild, but that in his vision it danced around in that queer way.

from Chapter Seven of Black Elk Speaks

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/Black-Elk-Speaks-Summaries-and- Commentaries-Chapter-7.id-38,pageNum-22.html

Love,
Andrew

Patric Responds:

Andrew,

…It is also said that he received the name from his father who was a medicine man named Crazy Horse. In an oral tradition the stories shared are from individuated viewpoints that many times arise from the unseen world. The vision of Crazy Horse referred to is most likely a deep secret between him and his father. After sharing his vision in a lodge with his father, his father transferred the name. Naming in the Lakota tradition is a very important event that guides the song of the heart of the person. I can only imagine the stories told about Crazy Horse around the fires of the people. He is a mythic hero in modernity in the real sense of still being alive in our imaginations. What is good about him today is we are interested in being like him, finding the ‘Holy Grail in Presencing’ our lives with such dignity, generosity, knowledge, courage and wisdom. I know Indians who believe they are in communication with Crazy Horse and there is a woman in Australia who believes she is Crazy Horse.

‘Structural Determinism’ is important in this regard because it anchors the biology in the autopoietic process of cognition. I am an ‘observer’ giving a report of an ‘experience’ in living-in-realization. I can not say what is’truth’ or ‘illusion’ as an observer. The embodied world I am participating in is earth, a biological architecture that constitutes, sustains and maintains the capacity of this autopoietic reflection in the moment. I do not take this for granted in living and I am open to conversations of becoming, reflecting on the unseen world and unknowing dimensions of being and consciousness. My stories and other stories are reflections of a cognitive process for interpreting what we point to as’reality.’ As an autopoietic living being I am constantly moment-to-moment making assessments about reality from an emotioning so as to take effective actions in the situation I am encountering. Sometimes I make ‘mistakes’ in my assessments of reality which are only realized later in learning. The science of structural determinism is paramount in my assessment in designing a future world together as Homo sapiens amans because it ‘grounds’ human experience in a dynamic culture of biology, embracing the fundament ‘biology of knowing (autopoiese)’ and the ‘biology of love (legitimacy-in-coexistence in the presence of others—an autopoietic multi-verse of reality). There is no longer any ‘truth’ or ‘purpose’ just ‘reflective wonder in experience.’

Here is a little secret experience of mine as an autopoietic reflection that is a generative exploration in this conversation. When I was initiated into the Mankind Project March 2000, I participated in a deep heroic journey on a carpet where it is emotionally bloody, and I walked away with the animal name ‘eagle bear.’ Years latter I discovered Mel’s grandfather’s “Fools Crow.” My Lakota name was’Mato Wambli’ (eagle bear). So men around the world called me ‘eagle bear’ and of course, I have reflected about the meaning. I could invent stories about who I am, what is the connection, and exploit the experience in my identity in a deviant manner of self-deception. A couple of years later, Mel and I became friends and our first meeting really was his attendance of a 8-day ‘Hollow Bones Zen Retreat’ with me. I asked him if it was OK for me change the english ‘eagle bear’ to Lakota ‘Mato Wambli’ and he said ‘yes’ and confirmed it. The act of requesting his blessing was an act of respect and his’yes’ was a confirmation that has been spoken about or in many stories ever generated. So today when I enter the Zendo of Hollow Bones to sit and check-in spiritually in the circle I say “Mushin Mato Wambli.” Is there any reason to speculate on the meaning of this event and the past? No. What is important is to embody the experience in my presencing in this circle, which is silence, stillness and solitude and maybe eventually it will have some part in the outside world. I don’t know nor do I need to know. Past and future are irrelevant in living with who you are!

I invite you to join the circle as time and circumstances permit. It is the center for ‘zero point.’ An extremely rewarding experience once you wrestle the ‘monkey mind’ to solid ‘ground.’ A transmission of compassionate love springs forth and one is home at last!

Patric

References

• Bateson, G. (1967). A Theory of Play and Fantasy. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.
• Bateson, G. (2000). Steps to the Ecology of Mind: : Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Eliot, T. (1950). T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Essays, 1909-1950. Orlando, FL A: Harcourt Brace and Company.
• Kafka, F. (circa 1919), The Wish to be a Red Indian…
• Mails, T. (1979). Fools Crow. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.
• Neihardt, J. (1979). Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, New Edition. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.

The Conversants

Patric Roberts (57) Social Entrepreneur, raised in Columbus, Ohio, veteran of US Army 68-71, ordained priest July 1974 in the Holy Order of MANS, 22 years in business as an entrepreneur in research, consulting and contracting. Participated in Fernando Flores “Ontological Design Research” 88-91, and attended the “International Symposium of Autoipoiese: Biology, Language, Cognition and Society’ in 1997 and submitted a paper entitled “An Autoenthnography of Autopoiese: Communication, Relationship and Community.” In 2000 entered extended litigation with an Insurance companyuntil settlement in 2005. The ‘collapsing boundary’ of a hail storm in the ‘domain of business’ opened an exploration into the earth-based spirituality with the Lakota People at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Founder of The Order of Earth in May 2002, committed to creating a global platform for “elders’ and first project being developed is’Maka Si Tomni (Surrounding the Universe) Bringing Forth a Thriving Lakota (First Nations) Language and Culture.

Andrew James Campbell (54) Artist and writer, raised in England under no church or faith. Studied Fine Arts and Art History after a spell in academic publishing with Oxford University Press.(1970) I am the artist at the Global Dialogue on Leadership Project and a Founding core faculty member at R2 (Rennaissance2) and the Galatea Programme, Perpignan, France. I serve the Editorial Board at Integral Review as Arts and Creativity Editor. I have occasionally advised and commissioned publication of works here at Integral Leadership Review. I coach and converse with a wide variety of folk. As for matters Integral, i am a mere novice. I consider the work of Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela and Fernando Flores to be key instruments in navigating well what may well prove to be the last spiraling decades of a collapsing ‘globalised’ civilisation. I am currently planning a number of events, to be hosted in France and Oxford University with the Lakota (First Nations) People, 2009.