I just want to preface my sharing with saying please be respectful of my story and treat your own with the same degree of care. Your story does not just belong to you. For better or for worse this fact is used to command and control. I’m not going to get things right all the time, not do I want to. And I don’t want you to either. I will leave things out, I will say the wrong thing. I will create tension.
Tension is an asset. Tension is the point where the light hits the mirror. Tension is power. We need to create better containers for tension.
Responding to:
Tangentially Speaking with Chris Ryan | 525 - Why Podcast?
Here’s a question in response to Chris’.
Does a renaissance in our social engagement system then drive revolution?
And what happens after the revolution? Renaissance is about imagination. Imagination creates the new game. To believe, we need to imagine together.
My view is that the Social Engagement System (SES) needs to be officially incorporated into our conception of the automatic nervous system. Doing this will widen our perceptions of ourselves and that of the greater collective. Doing this widens our view of cognition. Distributed cognition is the goal here.
Michael Samsel writes,
The social engagement system is a two way interaction system (receptive and expressive) based mainly in the eyes, ears, larynx, and mouth, but incorporating the entire face and the torso above the diaphragm. All twelve cranial nerves participate in the social and expressive functions. However, only four of these nerves have both motor (efferent) and sensory (afferent) functions. They are the trigeminal, facial, glossopharyngeal, and the vagus. Interestingly enough, it is also these four, along with the oculomotor nerve, that carry most of the parasympathetic fibers involved in the cranial nerve system! Cranial nerves are not merely divided by territory, but actually overlap with complementary functions. Here is the system supporting eating, smiling, suckling, kissing, baring the teeth, voice, breathing, and the heart!
The subtlety, interplay, and delicate overlap of the cranial nerve system not only is wondrous to contemplate, but also very little understood. I am not saying it is misunderstood, but rather that it has not been studied in proportion to other structures of the body, despite being known about for more than a hundred years.
- Michael Samsel, Shift Toward the Social Engagement System
This is a generalisation but I think our current global SES is characterised by centralised command & control.
Command and control is top down. Often mean, aggressive or simply indifferent. Largely unable produce authentic empathy or compassion. It has a tendency to:
Homogenise nuance
Indifferent to criticism
Impose despotic stereotyping
Silo off everything
Encourage binary disunity
Fracture meaning making to maintain dominance
Farms sovereignty | Extracts your data, labour, political power, vitality
Hates complexity
I think we probably all want a Sense & Respond based SES. It has a tendency to:
Harmonize nuance
Is collaboration
Invite and investigate tension
Share
Encourage binary unity
Fractal sense making to maintain autonomy
Cultivates sovereignty | Respects your data, labour, political power, vitality
Loves complexity1
So, if we’re revising our collective way of being in the world. Story telling is key. Sharing circles are vital. SAFETY is important. Not everyone want to share with the entire world like Christ Ryan or Krista Tippett.
I think to sense is to receive, to consume, to listen, to feel tension, to get full, fuelled up, and also to compost, digest, learn, become inspired. To dwell.
I think to respond is to share, answer, return, acknowledge. To sprout, fuse, to grow, integrate, educate, teach, heal, complexify, expend energy, synthesise, spread wings. When we respond we tether relational hyphae to other parts of the social engagement system. To connect. To distribute cognition.
Why Podcast?
Because who owns the stories of the day, owns the keys to our imagination.
This is my rambling response to Chris’ recent post and pod titled Why Podcast?
Pretty great question.
I firmly believe that more of us should be telling our stories. With that comes responsibility. We need to create better sharing spaces because stories deserve the right container. Stories deserve respect. We need to respect our own story and that of others. Stories, more than most other things, need to be held with care and celebrated.
Storing telling is the place where we come alive.
Mycelium Network Dialogue as an idea is a name for what I think Chris is pointing towards. Maybe. I’m sure there are other names to describe the fractal universe of interweaving story. MND is just what I’m using to put my finger on it. It’s the sharing circle, the yarn circle. Indigenous people have known the importance of this forever.
It’s just an idea. It feels important to me to try and foster. But maybe it’s not as important as I feel it to be. You tell me? In any case, I don’t think it’ll really work unless there is some degree of network effect.
It is a container. It’s just a way to describe the hyphae of our relationships and a way to interact with a bigger part of ourselves. Stories are powerful strings of relevance that paint our world with meaning.
Mycelium Network
Mycelium Network Dialogue as a thing is an information technology in service to collective cognition. It is peer-to-peer. It is a store of values. Story in this idea lives on blockchain decentralised ledger. You, your groups, your clubs, your councils, your organisations through to our largest shared collective who, own their stories. You own your story and access them using a smart wallet which can have multiple owners, sensible security mechanisms, and access to a crazy decentralised architecture that is soon (hopefully) going to replace / subsume the despotic economic system of today.
In them you own your story and all your stuff. You choose when and how you’d like to share. Look at Estonia – the Digital Republic Secured by Blockchain as an example. Citizens now own all their data. It belongs to them. They choose to share it. It is not hauled up and stored in a enormous database that is vulnerable to hacks and existing for the purpose of surveillance and manipulation. We can do the same with our story as we can with our drivers license or health records.
Mycelium Network Dialogue as a family is enabling storying telling for sensing and responding to the world as a cooperative. It lives in our hearts first. Sapiens love a good yarn. It is the fabric of community. We need to acknowledge that and respect that as critically true and has never been more important.
Mycelium Network Dialogue is a formation of larger identity. We collect yarns and store them up in our sense of ourselves, our relationships and our hypersubjects of the great whole. Yarns are to be designated precious. Yarns are the threads we need for braiding sense making.
Mycelium Network Dialogue is the formation of endopluralism
Dialogue treats tension with curiosity and inquiry.
Dialogue compost our bullshit with acceptance and compassion.
Mycelium Network Dialogue creates antifragility. Making us all stronger, not just a few.
Mycelium Network Dialogue as a framework for polycentric governance. Is critical. If we are to survive a climate apocalypse then we need grass roots conversations connecting solutions to resources.
Mycelium Network Dialogue is definitely just a simple idea. It doesn’t have become a platform or a institution. It could be a place. But more importantly it could be a technique. The question is how to make safe and respectful online conversation space scale. How do we sit around the fire together so dispersed and fractured?
Well I hope at least one person finds this as interesting as I do. Thanks for reading.
Enjoy a cup of tea and/or a little THC and get cozy. Listen to this with a loved one. Terence McKenna - Nature Loves Complexity
A Reply: Why Podcast? They create a daisy chain of relational hyphae. And more is better!