Second Renaissance Study Group

The Psychological Drivers of the Metacrisis

Simon's study copy of the transcript

Notes about and links to follow-up activities

Reflections

• Who are we writing for, and what is the message?
• Study group acting as a pointer for how we get beyond individual intellectuality, towards collective not-just-intellectuality
  • Connection to Second Renaissance
• Putting into words what unfolded over two months
  • Beyond argument and debate - we were trying to build a culture where we are adding to the development of each other's ideas
• How do we surface the connections, the generative, live fruitful questions which emerged from our experience? Which we can feed back into the wider Life Itself frame (and the wider frame still)
  • Reading through the notes again (and possibly going back to the recordings)
  • Is there a way of going through it together?
  • Could go through notes and highlight sections that could be interesting to rewatch –> then rewatch them together
• Tasks
  • Read through notes
  • highlight points to rewatch
  • note immediate reflections / questions (for ourselves / to ask others)
  • putting through chatGPT or Claude?

Distillation from https://github.com/orgs/life-itself/discussions/1022

(This is initially by Simon, 2024-03-29. Note: when I say "the trio" I'm referring to McGilchrist Schmachtenberger and Vervaeke. This is sorted into categories, rather than simply sequential.)

Attendance

• Started with 14 people
• Recognising that it's normal for attendance to fall off
• Every session had at least 5 participants (that's good!)
• There was a core of 7 who missed at most only a couple of sessions
• Different people starting off quite differently: some nearly silent, some very vocal…
• Settled down to what felt like a good balance of contribution
• Some people start from a stance of knowledge, others of ignorance

Unclear areas to review

Session 4, just before check-outs… review Simon; Elisa; Lauren

• Puzzled by Elisa's " feeling of exhaustion "; what did Simon say before that, and how does Elisa's stuckness merge with Lauren's feeling freed? I'd like to review this bit and then through the checkouts as well, to try to get a better sense of what was in the air.

Session 5, beginning of Discussion:

• Elisa "picking up on vulnerability, without it love is impossible." but explanation not noted! What was it?

Session 6: Trace through Lauren's comments about religion; make better sense of those.

Salient issues talked about (in sequence)

• Session 1: feeling of opening up; how to manage our conversation?
  • e.g. the "Themes theories & concepts" page was barely used at all
  • hypothes.is works for some but not all
  • How to help this group function? E.g. should we have breakouts or not?
  • What issues are we going to include?
  • Experimental, challenging feel
• Session 2: balance between hemispheres; raising the issue of the sacred
• Session 3: the individual and the group; LH and RH; how they interrelate
• Session 4: (the somatic enquiry session)
• 4→5: Martin highlighting ¶279; Simon ¶262 ¶357 ¶360
• Session 5: Vulnerability fully on the table this time. Lauren leads, everyone follows.
• 5→6: Small scale → easier connection and intimacy: RH … globalised → need for simplification: LH
• Session 6: Scaling → growing relational capacity? Scaling up or deep? Several aspects of this.
  • A shared recognition that the trio are not dealing with the issues in the way that we would see most helpful.
• 6→7: suggestion for more structure in conversation. What's that about?
  • Nicholas prompts us to say where we are coming from. May be worth noting what is said here? (I haven't tried.)
  • Sense of LI getting (well) into the "sticky stuff" of how to move forward
• Session 7: Is 'rightness' what the trio conversation seeks; or can that only come as a reflection on action?
  • Not static LH or RH. Theme of moving “between these ways of knowing”
  • The other factors beyond the psychological (politics, economics, …)
• 7→8: The sense of argument between Martin and Nicholas
  • Is the idea of structure something to avoid argument? Can it?
  • What kinds of argument are best avoided, what best addressed / approached / held?
• Session 8:
  • What don't we agree on? It's not yet clear.
  • The big question of what are helpful structures.

Developments

• Felt like a vital, inspired move to have a somatic enquiry session in the middle
• Session 5 was where everyone commented on vulnerability and the sense of a deeper connection.
• Session 6: continued recognition of increased honesty.
  • Development in our sense of what religion is or stands for.
  • Stuckness (non-development); is it a LH thing, and is that the "bad"?
• Session 7: "another conversation about coherence. All of us see aspects of reality, partial, only when we tap into the information that we have (unique) and feel safe enough to bring it into the group, that's when we get the whole picture"
  • Very wide range of topics opening up.
• Session 8 (overall reflections)
  • marked increase in vulnerability
  • new aspects opening up — for most people?
  • vulnerability; "Conversations have had a real personal impact" religion; channelling.

Questions for potential exploration

How much of the below emerged as points of divergence within the group / between certain people?

• How do we understand social organisation(s)?
• What kind of culture enables the RH more fully?
• What is the relationship between wisdom and power?
• Is it expected that individuals will develop very differently during an experience like this? What experience is being referred to here?
• What is the role for the collective to counterbalance individual bias, as part of DDS?
• What practical arrangements and steps contribute to the development of wisdom, or "scaling" wisdom?
• What role does that embodied sense of connection play in a DDS? Emerging from trust, safety, … ?
• What kind of 'wisdom' are we talking about anyway?
• What causes stuckness? Could it be over-complexity → LH coping → no RH flexibility? In individuals? In groups?
• What are the many aspects of scaling? (And how does this affect DDS & 2R?)
• The danger is to scale up without scaling deep. How can we do both at the same time, that is the challenge. This seems very interesting to me!
• Religion: barrier or enabler? And what makes the difference? Personal avoidance?
• In what way is LI in a moment of moving from "what" to "how"?
• How can we move beyond the perhaps tame/lame "solutions" offered by the trio?
• To what extent are the drivers of metacrisis actually psychological? Or do things just happen when you get to a certain point of interaction between humans? Also super interesting!
• How can we be sure of where we are and what we're doing, and that we are not just still continuing to replicate the problems?
• How can we design spaces where people can experience trust even more quickly?
  • What structures serve this kind of space best?
• In a DDS, and for the 2R, how do we address the kind of argument we saw in 7–8? Could we see it as transforming LH argument into RH connection?
• How do be balance agreeableness with honesty and integrity so that we can be saying what we really feel and mean, and trust that it will be acceptable?
• How can we "hold each other in those moments of in-between fuzziness?"

Actions to take

• Isabela: "would love to do something else like it in future" (What?)
• Martin: Get deeper into dialogos framework, EITHER for group OR into material
• Simon: Take the tension and look into it:
  • practical strategies for addressing tensions in DDS and 2R
• Gavin: Small groups of 3-5 people exploring wisdom
• Simon: Explore the limitations of this online format and seek even better ones
• Simon: Could we can have this kind of study group as a practice ground for people to join the research group? Rather than simply having open doors with no tests or checks? The point would be to take something that is of value and relevance anyway, and get people to study it together. That allows them to find and connect with each other. The object of study needs to be something that is not owned by one of the participants. And ideally it could be a conversation with differing points of view, so that different participants can identify with different views.

Please add your further suggestions below!