My good friend and colleague
and I have this ongoing beef over something I wrote three years ago, in which I declared the transition of the New Year to be arbitrary and meaningless.I said,
…I’m also thinking about the fact that there is no actual categorical difference between December 31st, 2020 and January 1st, 2021. This Thursday and Friday will not be a year apart--only a single day. The same strengths will propel us. The same constraints limit us. We are the same selves, occupying the same systems, with character and construct that changes only from moment-to-moment, not year-to-year.
I still get a kick out of discussing this with them. As with many of my opinions, this one only partially captured my thinking on the subject at hand—a strong opinion held loosely, which conflicts with opinions I hold just as strongly. I do understand the value of designated transitions. Rituals of passage from season to season and year to year can be powerful and useful. We are a time-bound species, trapped at a biological level in (the illusion of?) linear progression, and it behooves us to establish moments of pause, reflection, to look backward and then forward, to be deliberate in our plan of action and strategic in how we step into the unfolding future based on what it is we actually value and signals from the present and recent past, rather than sleepwalking through the day to day as mere agents of the systems which contain and constrain us. But, as I will explore here, I also believe in the primacy of the present—it being the most “real” thing we have access to, future and past being necessarily reduced to abstractions, as we can only really access them abstractly. Perhaps this is me demonstrating the Janusian thinking highlighted in Austin’s post this week about New Years and Paradoxes.
This year, prompted by a discussion with Austin on a private Discord, I’ve taken some time to reflect on the past year, to see where the reflection takes me. I’m doing this by reviewing things I’ve shared publicly—on LinkedIn, Patreon, Wordpress, and this Substack. I attempted to use a Miro board to catalogue and draw connections and themes between these various posts. I discovered after many hours of reviewing these materials that this is a stupid amount of work which would take me weeks, and there is no way I’m gonna summarize everything in a single post. The exercise has proven valuable and I think I’m gonna keep it going, but for this post I will just see where what I’ve reviewed so far takes us…
Think of all these things I share continuously as bread crumbs—ideas and content dropped on dark forest paths to guide others (and myself) into my present thinking and perception—and this piece is a small loaf of (gluten free) bread pudding made of a few handfuls of forest-path-gathered bread crumbs (ew).
One year ago, I invited whoever was interested to join us for an Agitare event reflecting on the previous year. This was the first of a handful of events which we called “Connect/Reflect”, in which I guided participants through some simple reflective practice, using moves inspired by Jabe Bloom’s “Ideal Present” concept (made into a canvas by Ben Mosior). I found the practice valuable. Guiding me was this axiom from complex systems theory:
In ordered systems, what matters most is the roles of nodes, while in complex systems what matters most is the relationship between nodes.
The platform of Agitare, focused on this ideal of holding space, seemed a good one to employ in the pursuit of deliberate connection-building, focusing on fostering interrelatedness rather than the mechanistic employment of pre-designated functions. We drew diverse and beautiful people into zoom calls, breathed together, and let them and their experiences and needs drive what happened next, and it was quite nice. I strengthened and created new connections, and from those relationships I continue to see an emergent, irreducible value in my life.
I was heavily inspired to attempt this type of event by the recent writings of Nora Bateson, whose pieces “Ready-ing” and “Aphanipoiesis” remain lodged in the curve of my cognitive lenses. I began to think of the unfolding future as emerging from the substrate we tend and steward in the present, and communities such as Agitare offer fertile ground only insofar as our degree of connectedness and interrelatedness are high and healthy.
I will also add that I hosted these events in response to a demand signal from those I was connected to. My policy in recent years has been that I will put energy into the things other people are actively putting energy into (as participants or producers), as a way of preserving energy only for those things giving off a signal which indicates future possibility. Connectedness creates positive feedback loops for further connectedness, and a lack of connectedness becomes a downward spiral. I have had less capacity to create events for deliberate connection in the Agitare community in the last year, and the signals may be dimming there, though it remains somewhat active. I never wanted that project to be about me, and so I have resigned myself to be accepting of its deciduous nature, and accepting of the fact that it may ultimately fall away and fall silent. I must remain responsive to signals of what is continuing.
A central theme of these “Connect/Reflect” events was noticing, a topic highlighted in another post from January, about walking my dog every day in the face of the above-pictured splendor:
“I've always been someone who notices things. But I'm almost never noticing the things that are intended to be noticed. For example, from a young age, I often haven't noticed when my name is being called. I'm often too deep in thought or distraction, too busy noticing something else and it takes something more than just the sound of my name being shouted, even at close range, to jostle me from my reverie. I remember at a very young age having friends who realized that in order to get my attention, they might have to put a hand on my shoulder. In a world where we place value on noticing the right things, what my brain does can easily be diagnosed as a disability.
But of course noticing is something that has set me apart in good ways. The things that I write are the product of noticing, finding deep interest and beauty and intrigue in details and what might otherwise be deemed distractions.”
Another interesting aspect of this practice, being guided by the Ideal Present framework, was that elements of the past and future become only ways in which to reflect on the now. In many ways, deliberate noticing can be understood as a method of wrestling our attention from the relentless pull of the past and the future and bringing it back to the present.
In Agitare’s Slack in January, I recall noticing being a core topic of interest as well. Austin had just read and recommended the book “Stolen Focus” by Johann Hari, about how technology (and particularly the attention economy) have taken from us some deeply important human experiences. We later read and discussed the book as an Agitare book club pick. I shared in Slack a TEDx Talk by Bill Keaggy called “How to Find Attention, Mindfulness, and Creativity in the Ordinary” Valerie Frietas recommended a book called “On Looking” by Alexandra Horowitz, which went on my Amazon wish-list and arrived just last week as a Christmas gift. Side note: Horowitz’s book also begins with dog-walking as the impetus for her exploration of the topic of noticing.
Rachel Davis offered up “The Art of Noticing” as another recommendation. A few months after reading Stolen Focus, I encountered Jenny Odell’s much more political “How to Do Nothing”, which I have enjoyed. Now here is my noticing stack so far.
Noticing was a core theme for much of the year. I was lucky enough to attend a “People Need People” training event (the online version of Bateson’s Warm Data Labs), which effectively surface serendipitous, emergent information from a group through facilitated interaction and interconnection. The primary prompt from Bateson in the exercises was “What is continuing?”—a fascinating constraint using the infinitive to guide attention towards both past and future states while remaining firmly grounded in the present.
I also attended Tamra Stanish’s somatic coaching workshop at an AFWERX Industry Days event. This was a topic I had encountered in the writings of Adrienne Maree Brown, but here was the first time I’d really explored what it meant. It’s a kind of listening to your body, noticing what it’s telling you, and from that present state making moves through inquiry and reflection to determine future steps, priorities, or paths. More noticing.
I wrote a lot about technology this year as well, and our relationship with it. Austin’s explorations on the topic of “philosophy of technology”, discussions of Austin’s Socio-Technological Vision (inspired by C. Wright Mills’ “Sociological Imagination”), and the above-mentioned books nudged me into thinking of technology as “eliminating journeys in favor of destinations”. I wrote at length about that topic in the following piece just a few months ago:
Another theme I uncovered in my meander through content from the last year was something that might be called Ontological Filtering. I discussed this a bit in an essay a few days ago about adopted and imposed ontologies:
Ontology is the layer of categorical abstractions we lay over the mess. Not only does it hide the information which gave rise to such abstractions, it also serves as a filter and focusing lens for new information—directing our attention towards only that information which is coherent with and fits into the established ontology, preventing us from doing the work of sensemaking anew, in which we might consider alternate ways in which to categorize and respond to the information in front of us.
Noticing, as a practice, could be understood as a means through which we might escape the relentless pull of the ontologies which constrain our perception and keep us humming along the well-worn grooves of patterns of thought and behavior, anchored by ossified perceptions or structures informed by a static past (contrast with Carse’s changing past)… or perhaps informed by future goals, which can be understood as attention-attenuating ontologies in and of themselves (for better or worse)…
On this note… In a densely-packed conversation between Iain McGilchrist, John Vervaeke, and Daniel Schmachtenberger titled The Psychological Drivers of the Metacrisis I share two quotes:
Iain McGilchrist:
“So when we come to talk about purpose and its relationship with meaning, what I would say is, first of all, to make the distinction, which really, we've made, but it's the distinction between Carse’s finite games and infinite games. Finite games have a purpose and when you’ve achieved it, the game is over. Infinite games are things that have their value in being performed at all, and therefore eternally have that value. We've got locked into the type of belief that everything is a finite good, which it very clearly can't be, and the things that give us meaning, I think, are for very obvious reasons not specifiable as extrinsic goals: we should try and do this and make that, and so on.”
John Vervaeke:
“John Keats made a distinction between goals and ideals and the word “purpose” equivocates between them. A goal is an end state that everything else is in the service to, and it's utilitarian, where an ideal is not. An ideal is something that is part of the grammar by which you interpret and make sense of yourself in your life.”
Goals… the topic at hand every year this time of year, and the subject of maybe 50% of LinkedIn traffic the rest of the time—the strategic underpinnings, abstractions from the future intended to attenuate our attention, drawing it away from the present and into a future anchored to abstractions about the past—the most effective technology at hand to turn what might otherwise be a fluid and shifting life into a series of finite games.
“Surprise in infinite play is the triumph of the future over the past. Since infinite players do not regard the past as having an outcome, they have no way of knowing what has been begun there. With each surprise, the past reveals a new beginning in itself. Inasmuch as the future is always surprising, the past is always changing.”
— James P. Carse
I should note that futures practices, as I’ve learned them from reading Jane McGonigal and others, can inform what Keats called ideals just as much as they inform goals.
I’m not arguing against reflection here. I’m not advocating against resolutions. I mostly don’t write with a goal in mind. I just kinda see where the reflection takes me. Perhaps that’s part of why my endings are always so bad, lol.
So noticing… here I will conclude by sharing some things that I’m noticing:
I’ve been struggling a lot this year:
I’m struggling to write. My Patreon project has stalled out somewhat, though I continue to plug away at it (encouraged by my Patrons, who I keep urging to stop paying me to produce nothing), trying to find inroads to that state of flow which I managed to achieve regularly in the first year of that project. Even this little piece has taken me days to draft, and… I mean… it’s kindof a mess lol.
I’m struggling to host events like I used to, due to a complete lack of social energy, and aspects of the Agitare community have grown noticeably quieter as a result, as described somewhere above. That said, the connectivity offered by that community continues to produce value for a good number of people, so I don’t anticipate pulling the plug.
I believe I should be seeking professional help for depression and other cognitive/emotional/energetic issues, but I am putting that off until my next move. There are a handful of reasons for this: loss of faith in local resources which I am confined to, the desire to avoid bureaucratically imposed triggers (which might threaten my career) when I get too much treatment, etc. I am not in danger or at particular risk, just somewhat mentally, physically, and emotionally reduced in ways that cause me significant frustration.
But of course those are all negative. Here’s a few more things I’m noticing to balance this out:
My relationships with loved ones and friends are the rich substrate from which everything I do emerges. I, in whatever state I am, am grateful for all those who continue to pour into me and spend time with me, listen to and participate in my creative outbursts and silliness.
I am grateful for this space, and for you who spend time with my meandering reflections. This platform which enables me to offer up whatever short bursts of inspiration last long enough to get something drafted has allowed me to continue to think and grow in my thinking. Just writing things like this little chaotic adventure always take me somewhere new, and I can build on them, just as this has been built on the things I shared this year.
I have been watching people reflect on the New Year with similar patterns, mostly with an eye toward change—in themselves, their world, or their condition—and that makes plenty of appreciable sense. I respect it. But I want to end here with a declaration that flies in the face of all that.
I would, I think, be content if in 2024 I was the same kind of person and experienced the same kinds of things as I did in 2023, so long as I had the capacity to be present in it, to notice it, and the same relationships to keep me firmly grounded and revitalized.
My condition being what it has been, I have this perpetual fear of things getting worse, of the next year being only more diminished, and therefore resolutions being no more than reflexive “rage against the dying of the light” (Dylan Thomas). But if we can, as Camus proposes, “imagine Sysiphus happy” in the absurdity of his perpetual and unchanging task, perhaps capable of the meaning-making which Viktor Frankl proposed is available to us at any given moment, what matters most really isn’t the finishing out of finite games laid out on the first of every year, but rather a presence in the present, which we might find through connecting, belonging, and noticing.
This might make for a good resolution…