Month: May 2011

I’ve had some interesting experiences over the past few days that have made me realize my place or role within the grander scheme of things if you will. What I’m seeing in the world right now is that there are a lot of people who are striving to become more authentic and independent which is great because this is what I’m all about at my core. It’s about connecting, empowering, and inspiring people to be their true authentic selves and pursue their own passions.

There’s one big problem in what I’m seeing though and this is where I think I might be able to help. I see all of these people becoming self-reliant and independent but at the same time, I seem them disconnecting from others in the process. In effect, what they are finding is that for them to be truly themselves, they feel they have to step away from society and others because others often pressure them to be what they don’t want to be.

Yet for us to evolve as a society, especially to overcome the challenges we face ahead, we need to be able to collectively work together in harmony. So it’s more than just helping individuals to see and live their lives in a new way, we need to help organizations to work in completely new ways as well. In effect, the change has to be holistic in nature, coming from both the bottom (individuals) and the top (organization) at the same time. This approach, which might seem paradoxical in nature, is something that Margaret Wheatley talked about in her book Finding Our Way.

Life takes form as individuals that immediately reach out to create systems of relationships. These individuals and systems arise from two seemingly conflicting forces: the absolute need for individual freedom, and the unequivocal need for relationships.

It seems that whenever we bargain with life and seek to satisfy only one of its two great needs, the result is lifelessness. We must live within the paradox; life does not allow us to choose sides. Our communities must support our individual freedom as a means to community health and resiliency. And individuals must acknowledge their neighbors and make choices based on the desire to be in relationship with them as a means to their own health and resiliency.

And what happens when we don’t fulfill these two needs? Something that will probably look familiar to a lot of people right now.

Particularly in the West, and in response to this too-demanding price of belonging, we move toward isolationism in order to defend our individual freedom. We choose a life lived alone in order for it be our life. We give up the meaningful life that can only be discovered in relationship with others for a meaningless life that at least we think is ours. What we can see from our pursuit of individualism is the terrible price exacted for such independence. We end up in vacant places, overwhelmed by loneliness and the emptiness of life.

I was just watching a show on the Oasis Channel that was talking about the massive diversity of insects within the world (i.e. quintillion). One interesting part of the show was how they were talking about the simple brains that insects have but when they worked together as a whole they collectively were shown to have this emergent complicated behaviour that was normally seen in more complex brained creatures. In effect, this is one of the core fundamentals of my research. I believe that while we are individually highly intelligent, collectively our emergent intelligence could allow us to do things that seem almost impossible within our existing world view today.

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art,
emergence is the way complex systems and patterns
arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.
Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels
and of complex systems.

Emergence, Wikipedia

I think the key fundamental aspect of emergence though is the “relatively simple interactions”. This reminded me a lot of my symbiotic experiences online while playing FPS games. In effect, the simpler the methods of interaction, the more effectively we worked as a group, to the point that no one relayed what was needed to be done but instead just relayed the awareness of what was happening around them. This in turn created a collective awareness that greatly surpassed our own localized awareness, spurring us into action almost instinctively. Now imagine this same emergent power being utilized by groups of people around the world (i.e. communities, organizations, etc)? It would be a pretty amazing world to live within, something that was hinted at by R.L. Wing within The Tao of Power (Tao Te Ching).

“The philosophy that Lao Tzu left behind is actually an experiment, one that individuals undertake when they are ready to enter the next phase of human evolution – that of fully  conscious beings who are actively directing both their own destinies and the destiny of the world around them. In his ultimate vision, Lao Tzu believed that if each and every one of us could realize and gain control of our evolutionary power, it would invisibly unit us and allow us to become a collective, compassionate, and fully aware social and universal organism.”

The following shows some of the world view and paradigm differences between an MMO game world and the real world.

Game World

Purpose – Usually before we even begin to start interacting within the game world, we are told the overall purpose of our need within it, usually in the form of some global crisis (i.e. an evil is spreading and it needs to be stopped).

Role – While you may look at a list of classes, you’re usually determining what type of role you want to have within the world first (i.e. tank, dps, healer).

Class – Once you’ve clarified your role, you usually decide upon a specific class that fits your play style (i.e. tanks can be warriors, paladins, etc).

Notice that the above approach is top down in nature and assumes at least a general sense of global awareness from the very start. We see the challenging purpose before us and then we decide how to “heroicly” overcome it through our role and class.

Real World

Class – Usually once we reach a certain age, we’re told we need to figure out “what we want to be” and sometimes we’re given some aptitude tests to help us figure out our optimal class or “job” in life.

Role – After living a while and having gone through a variety of jobs (classes) in life, we may start seeing a pattern within our lives that there is an optimal role for us to fulfill within the world which can sometimes be figured out through behavioural means (i.e. personality profiles) or metaphysical means (i.e. astrology, numerology, etc).

Purpose – After living almost our entire lives (and sometimes not even then), we may finally see the greater purpose needed within the world around us.

Notice the above approach is bottom up in nature with almost next to no awareness at the start and sometimes almost no full awareness at the end. Even more so, due to not knowing our real role and often picking the wrong class numerous times, we don’t feel very heroicly able to tackle such a large and challenging purpose, even if it is clearly presented before us (i.e. I’m just one person. What can I do?).

I’m simply stunned. I just discovered Peter Michaud’s website and after reading a handful of essays on it, I feel like I’ve met a kindred spirit on a similar journey in life. To start off, his About page describes a sensation that he feels that is almost exactly like a sensation that I feel myself, yet I’ve never ever told anyone about it except maybe my mother and my wife.

I have this pressure in my chest that feels like a fire fighting to get out. It claws up my arms, forcing me to embrace whatever comes, and to love it all the while. It climbs up my throat, and makes me think, and learn, and grow. I feel its heat through my body, and I have no choice but to spread it.

To me, this “fire” in my chest is my creative energy which defines who I uniquely am through the act of creation. Whenever I’m unable to do authentic creative work for whatever reason, I find this creative energy builds up within me until it reaches almost a boiling point. And there have been times when I’ve literally stretched my arms out and head back to try to release this creative energy in a deep emotional blast from my solar plexus, as I visualize this flaming pillar of golden yellowish energy bursting forth from my chest and up towards the heavens. If I could visually show what I’m feeling, it would probably relate closely to what is seen within the final scene of The Fifth Element movie.

But the similarities don’t end there. Like Peter, my passion at its basic core is helping people to become truly authentic individuals which in turn means helping them to express their authentic selves creatively in some way. The difficulty that I’m having right now though is how to clearly express this in words to people because it might seem quite foreign to them, particularly within the materialistic economy-focused world we live in. How I’ve tried to bridge the gap and communicate on a level that people can understand is by using terminology similar to professionals in design, particularly systems design (or ecosystems). And in a sense, that’s really what I’m trying to do, I’m trying to restore or heal the imbalances within a complex system that is out of balance, so that it begins running more efficiently and naturally again.

I think this is why my “Be Real Creative” and “Connect. Empower. Inspire.” mantras are so important to me because they relate directly with this need to help people be more authentic. But what I’ve realized is that before you can truly help other people, you need to truly help yourself first. And that’s what this journal is all about. In effect, it’s a daily reminder to help myself reveal and retain who I truly am deep down inside. Or put another way, I want it to be my place where I can fall back to when life gets too tough and I need to rest and rejuvenate in reflective thought.

That said though, like Peter, I still have this greater desire or purpose that is burning within me and it needs to be released and fulfilled. All I know at this point in time is glimpses of something I’m not quite sure I understand yet. It’s almost like a new way of living that effects all avenues of life (i.e. living, playing, learning, working) and that makes the most sense to me for one very important reason. Life itself is a complex system on a variety of levels. Often times, we think we can change our lives by just changing one aspect of it. Yet often that doesn’t work because we don’t live within a perfect closed system but within a connected environment. Thus if we want to truly change our lives, we need to look at not just one aspect of it but it as a whole which often requires a new outlook or perspective, similar to a paradigm shift. Once that occurs, then your attitude and outlook are completely changed, thus allowing you to change all aspects of your life as a whole in unison and in harmony.