[FRIAM] Joe Rogan interviewing Bernie Sanders.

Thu Jun 26 15:41:03 EDT 2025

DaveW -

> Some musings because Steve Smith mentioned Christopher Alexander:

Thanks for throwing in...  If my mansplanatory off-key /song to the self 
/here was intended to do anything (besides to scratch it's own itch) it 
was to prompt some tangents such as your reflecting on Alexander's 
influence on your own life and career. I am glad you saw the 
reference/rhyme to Powell as well.

Macy is worth knowing (about)... early career work as an analyst for the 
CIA (Sri Lanka) evolving into Buddhism, Systems thinking (Club of 
Rome/World3), contemporary of Bateson and Capra, Buddhism. Activism.   
At 96, she is a credit to her generation (that of my parents).

>
> Alexander was a trained mathematician (he wanted to be an artist, but 
> dad insisted on math/science).
>
> His Ph.D. thesis, published later as /Notes on the Synthesis of Form/, 
> specified a formal "Science of Design;" equations galore. (Richard 
> Gabriel later demonstrated that the math did not compute.)

I read /Notes/ interleaved with Kauffman's /Investigations/ in late Dec 
2000 while off-grid traveling NZ, watching the debacle of the Gore/Bush 
unfold through BBC news channels. Collectively that was a transformative 
moment for me.

I think my epistemic grounding is less "mystical" than "mythopoetic".   
You and I probably read Alexander and Whitehead very differently because 
of this?  And yet.  Maybe someone here can mansplain this to me more 
better than I have to myself.  I've done my best to de-gender my 
evolving instance of GPT, but it still man-splains when I give it an 
opening.

I usually feel very resonant in my wabi-sabi framing of the topics on 
FriAM to your own,  yet somehow I still haven't sorted myself out around 
your language about anti or a-scientific approaches.  The distinction 
"rigorous but non-scientific" was a hint.  I'm working on it.

A difference might be that I have not had (any of?) the mystical 
experiences you have, so I am busy using my mythopoetic effort to 
prepare me for such if I ever encounter them, while you might be lead to 
mythopoesy by your mystical experiences?

>
> A seed was planted in /Notes/ in the form of "funny diagrams" later 
> deemed to be "patterns." Also a tiny bit of 'mysticism' in the chapter 
> on the "Non-selfconscious (sic) process." From the beginning Alexander 
> was conflicted—Scientist and Mystic.
>
> The book, /A Pattern Language/, advanced the scientist side, (and had 
> interesting impact on the programming community) while /The Timeless 
> Way of Building/ indulged the mystic—introducing the "Quality Without 
> A Name" (QWAN) along with  chapter titles resembling the /Tao Te Ching/.
>
> His penultimate work, the four volume, /On the Nature of Order/, sets 
> out a formalism for design focusing on "Life" ("Liveness") and, 
> ultmately, grounded in God. (Alexander was a devout Catholic.)
>
> I am not familiar with Joanna Macy, but the 
> ethnological/anthropological work of J.W. Powell has a lot of the same 
> tension as Alexander.
>
> This make me curious as to why there is so little interest in pursuing 
> the "mystical" / "non-scientific." Attempts to reconcile science and 
> religion, for example tend to be superficial, ignoring critical and 
> complex issues on both sides. Examples would be Polkinghorn (quantum 
> Christianity?) or Capra, et. al., (quantum Taoism).
>
> If "harmony," "peace," "humanity," "justice, " etc. are real goals and 
> not just virtue signalling, would it not be useful to develop a 
> rigorous (_not scientific_) program investigating the "mystical" or 
> the "other than scientific?" Whitehead's Process Philosophy, for 
> example, or Jung's psychological alchemy, (or Jung and Pauli's 
> synchronicity), or McGilchrist's /Master and His Emissary?/
>
> I am convinced that the mathematical, scientific, computational (AI be 
> damned), rational road will not take us anywhere near those goals.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 26, 2025, at 8:53 AM, steve smith wrote:
> > Maybe I am the choir singing (off key) to itself but:
> >
> > In the language of CAS, I propose that "governance" should be 
> considered
> > as the process of setting the rules of interaction, boundary 
> conditions,
> > and affordances in the goal of obtaining the patterns of harmony,
> > efficiency and creativity. Christopher Alexander, Joanna Macy or JW
> > Powell, not DOGE or the ReichMinistry or GosPlan or the CCCP?
> >
> > Thinking like a watershed, like an ecosystem would seem to be the
> > obvious metaphor, but I see the charm (nod to Marcus) to choose to be a
> > "free agent", a particle in kinetic brownian motion.   No system worth
> > trusting -> collapse the "self" to a point.
> >
> > IMO Life and Consciousness (whatever that is) is an exercise, a 
> study in
> > negEntropy.  Giving over to fascist or anarchistic extremes is like
> > thinking "everything will be perfect when the universe collapses into a
> > bose-einstein condensate/or becomes a equilibrium thermal-soup of "free
> > agents".
> >
> > It's the good stuff that happens somewhere in between?   I suppose I
> > might just let go of the silly conceit of "good stuff" though...
> > non-attachment?
> >
> > Mumble,
> >
> >   - Steve
> >
> >
> >
> >
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