Podcast Episode Discussions

Howdy, Jackie! Popping in with a perspective on this latest episode from (dun, dun, DUNNN)….academia. It’s long! It’s quite abstract at points! Writing it out has made me feel just a little bit more free! Please let me know if I’ve been eating too much of my own bulls***. I’ll start by saying that I’ve deeply appreciated this series so far. Alexander’s ideas (at least the ones shared in the episodes) convey something I think I’ve wished I could put into words for a very long time. It’s tempting for me to spend multiple pages here reflecting on the numerous personal experiences that come to mind regarding my own architectural fascinations; but alas, I’m in the middle of preparing for a series of oral exams next week. Translation: I’ll be regurgitating various rules and abstracted theories to some ivory tower types so that they can deem me suitable to do my work in the world. I’m admittedly being a bit dramatic, but I do mean it when I say I can feel the rigidity of these theoretical abstractions steeping, and constricting my ability to articulate those aforementioned experiences with the aliveness that they deserve.

So, I’m going to narrow down the scope of this reflection to the question you posed regarding creativity spontaneously emerging and adapting to it’s surroundings: “Why can’t we just start from this place?” It’s an unsettling question to sit with, and when I do, I can relate to the anger, sadness and rebellion that you mentioned Alexander conveys around the violence of modern construction systems. The rage boils even further when I think of my own challenges with finding a sense of belonging within academia. To be clear I do have an appreciation for my school, and have received some genuinely liberating guidance there within the labyrinth. I specifically chose it because the institution was built off of Carl Jung’s metaphysics of the collective unconscious. Yet, even at a school that was built with the intention of carrying on the depth psychological tradition that he seeded, his mere suggestion of an interdependent consciousness that precedes cognition is usually met in the classroom with high degrees of skepticism, if it’s not outright immediately dismissed with the flick of an eye roll. While many are happy to memorize the abstracted theories that grew from his life’s work, acknowledgement of the “less rational” roots of his framework can get pretty taboo in a group setting. This is not to say that I am “alone” in my own beliefs there, but there are enough voices in the room who feel compelled to verbally attack these ideas based on “lack of evidence” or “the problematic nature” of what they imply, that it seems to strangle the possibility of something new or spontaneous co-emerging. (Or, it’s at least slowing the birth of the co-emergence and adding some heat through resistance) Now, I don’t want to make this about what “they” are doing. Rather how “I” feel when this happens. Strangled. Constricted. Reduced. Angry. Ultimately…doubtful of myself? I mean, I don't quite have the clarity and conviction of Jules in that area of my life right now. In my search to make some sense of this, I found my way to a book from a Brazilian educator named Paulo Freire. The name of the book is Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and in it he criticizes what he calls the “banking model” of education (student is an empty vessel who needs to buy knowledge to become useful), arguing for a new "problem posing model" between teacher, student, and society in which the learner is a co-creator of knowledge in an iterative and adaptive process. What I found most interesting was the fundamental observation that spurred his work. During his time as a teacher, he noticed that his students seemed to have an unconscious fear of freedom, or rather…a fear of changing the way the world is.

So here is where things become interesting. Or at least…more liberating. Shortly after coming across this book, we covered a topic in my academic work that touches on the functionality of this “fear of freedom”. It’s called the Bayesian Brain Hypothesis. It works as a model of brain function based on the fundamentals of Free Energy Management. The Free Energy Principle suggests that any self-organizing system, including the human brain, remains organized by minimizing free energy to maximize the evidence for it’s own existence. The Bayesian Brain is motivated to reduce free energy states by constructing efficient and successful hypotheses…not by adapting to the environment, but by adapting the environment to fit the expectations and beliefs of the system. This management of free energy (and by extension, surprise containment), becomes the central mechanism for consciousness itself. Surprise and spontaneity become a threat to the organization and coherence of any self that is organized at the “I” level. The model also implies that the brain predicts at multiple nested levels simultaneously, from raw sensation at the bottom of the hierarchy, rising towards increasing levels of abstract identity. Each level needs to predict the inputs of the level below it. High levels predict abstract, stable patterns. Low levels predict immediate, raw, sensory detail. Prediction errors flow upward, updating higher-level models. Predictions themselves flow downward, constraining incoming data. (Buhner and sensory gating coming to mind here). By this model, “I” am not a thing, but a persistent prediction, confirmed across multiple input streams. So if this all checks out, it seems like perceived existence itself is preceded by sensory input…there is sensation, therefore I feel…I feel, therefore I am…I am, therefore “oh shit, now I’m thinking.” So, here I am. Doubting myself. Seeking proof that I exist, like a well oiled hypothesis generating machine. And know who I end up sounding like? Freaking DESCARTES, man! I mean, isn’t this how we ended up here in the first place?...“I think, therefore I am?”…As if cognition precedes existence? All of the sudden the model is flipped from bottom up, to top down. Literally constricting the flow of life at its source. And I get it. I’m seeing what adding a little bit of epistemic crisis to the cultural climate can do to a man. Not that I don’t love and appreciate the dramatic tension that doubt creates, but I do crave a little something to be certain of now and then! I recognize the irony here in needing to rely on an abstract model to try to "prove" my way out of abstract modeling, but it be like that sometimes. In response to your rhetorical question about why we can’t start from this place of creative spontaneity, I’m responding in the form of questions I’m really honing in on for exploration: “Why do I need to seek evidence of my own existence? What remains when I accept life as self-evident?” Maybe belonging, co-dreaming with Gaia without imposing my own cognitive structure, requires me to accept it as self evident that I exist (or even just accept that…hey, “I” kinda don’t). Is this a path to dissolving these persistent cognitive abstractions at their root?

Light hits a retina. Skin makes contact with a plant. There is difference, boundary, texture, friction, heat, current….change…alchemy…mutual belonging. Neither system trying to impose will on the other. Neither system resisting being changed by the other. We shape our dwellings. Our dwellings shape us. Our dwellings shape our community. Our community shapes our dwellings.

Anyway, thanks again for the episode and looking forward to part 3. I appreciate that this space exists for some heretical web slingin'. It’s not something that can happen just anywhere. (Just looked up the etymology of heretic. It’s from Greek, hairetikos, meaning “able to choose”…ya don’t say)

Without a doubt looking forward to those future episodes

This Tsuyoku Naritai concept is new to me. After sitting with it for a couple days it's made me realize that the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt was an ending story just as much as it was an origin story....a phase change of it's own. Execute or die trying, indeed. Maybe Tsuyoku Naritai was the necessary precursor for Moses to get his direct from God transmission in the first place. I'm sure Jonathan Seagull could attest.

I'm so excited to both be a part of and witness where we go from here! I am enthralled by your vision and synthesis of philosophies. Thank you for your work, Jackie!

I would love to hear your thoughts and explorations around peace. What does peace even mean? What does it look like in action? What does it look like to cultivate peace? Create peace? BE peace? I would love to put some boots on the ground to a concept that I feel has been over-spiritualized and under-practiced.

I also had an epiphany that went something like "If you want your parents to be elders, start seeing them and treating them that way." I know from experience that people are forced to live inside my projections of them. What if my projection of my parents (and their generation) was that of elder? How would my behavior or attitude toward them change? And in turn, how would their behavior change? Would they show up in the world differently? I would love to hear your thoughts on creating elders as I see you more and more stepping into this role in your own community and way of being in the world. Love you.

Just after listening to the 3rd in this trilogy, I read in Finite and Infinite Games "There is no such thing as an unnatural act. Nothing can be done to or against nature, much less outside it. Therefore, the ignorance we thought we could avoid by an unclouded observation of nature has swept us back into itself."

This has been a very helpful, and surprisingly relaxing idea to me. I remember a couple years ago... I was backpacking in Big Sur... somehow I was thinking about all the giant homes that humans have built over the last couple generations, the "McMansions". I was angry, judgmental, blaming, condemning. Then a brand new thought popped in that felt like it was from another being "Now imagine these homes in a few more generations. Community homes with room for multiple families and multiple generations. Good. Now thank the original builders and funders of those homes who had no idea what they were doing for future generations. You perceive it as selfish greed, but just outside your view is an act of service to future humanity."

Relaxing into the idea that I really have no clue what anything is for, and that there is a much larger evolution at play than my limited mind can perceive has been so relaxing for me. Judgement and blame and guilt are very heavy to carry and I find that this perspective helps to lighten that load. I will still continue to make choices that I believe create the world I long to see manifest, but I don't have to be a crusader anymore. And I can trust that we are all playing our part on some level that I can't see. What a relief.

Thank you for this podcast and your work in the world, Jackie. You are a gift and I love you!