00:10:21 Pete Kaminski: hackmd for notes: https://hackmd.io/@peterkaminski/rkc5LwySc 00:10:39 Hank Kune: The spell of the Sensuous 00:12:50 Klaus Mager: https://satyagraha.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/pitirim-sorkin-crisis-of-modernity/ 00:13:41 Pete Kaminski: https://hackmd.io/@peterkaminski/rkc5LwySc 00:14:58 Klaus Mager: https://www.academia.edu/6888222/The_Cultural_Evolution_of_Civilizations 00:17:56 Hank Kune: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_the_Wormhole 00:42:04 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: “The Absence of Gender. We have seen that Graeber and Wengrow have little interest in the environment and the material bases of human existence.

In the same way, they observe an almost religious avoidance of the concept of class, discussions of class relations and class struggle. Graeber certainly, and presumably Wengrow, have an understanding of class relationships and class struggle. They know what class does, and, indeed, which class they are from, but cannot, or will not, treat class relations as a motor of social change.” 00:42:14 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: “Just as striking is Graeber and Wengrow’s lack of interest in the social construction of gender. In passing they reproduce a near-Bachofen of matriarchy in Minoan Crete, on the one hand, and on the other, they include a scattering of patriarchal stereotypes in which women are nurturing and men are bullies.

Because they hold that inequality has always been with us, Graeber and Wengrow have next to nothing to say about the origins of gendered inequality among humans.” 00:42:25 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: from: https://mronline.org/2021/12/20/the-dawn-of-everything-gets-human-history-wrong/ 00:46:00 Marc-Antoine Parent: vs bonobos 00:52:02 Wendy McLean, NY: +1 Doug! 00:52:04 Wendy Elford: The context - environmental - changes the nature of the question that can be asked in any one or combination of cultures 00:52:18 Wendy McLean, NY: +1 Wendy 00:54:05 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: The myth of the stupid savage! 00:54:55 Wendy McLean, NY: +1 Hank. So eye opening to ‘see’ more clearly where the threads of thought / belief come from 00:56:14 Wendy McLean, NY: Change came from the bottom up 00:56:19 Wendy Elford: We can only think in terms of the words we have and the concepts we have to hand - language shapes thought in a primal way. 00:57:20 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Early in the chapter they point out that Europe in the 17th C was an intellectual backwater and virtually nobody had any experience of living in an egalitarian culture - it had to be thanks to people like Kandironk and others who began the dialogue with the European intellectuals that spurred so much thinking 00:57:55 Marc-Antoine Parent: Another place I encountered an analysis of the importance of first nations thoughts and values to USian culture is Pirsig's book Lila. 00:59:33 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Oh, I read that so long ago that I cant recall any of it🙄 00:59:46 Marc-Antoine Parent: https://aqualityexistence.com/2020/07/06/lila-by-robert-m-pirsig%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Achapter-3-reading-and-commentary/ 01:00:21 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Elizabeth Marshall Thomas is a writer who has a deep grasp of certain indigenous cultures 01:00:34 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Reindeer Moon is a fun read 01:03:27 Wendy McLean, NY: +1 Klaus. What is the environment that creates artistic beauty in the form of fireworks in one culture vs the environment that creates modes of distraction in the form of bombs in another? 01:04:02 Wendy McLean, NY: Correction *distruction^^. lol 01:04:43 Wendy Elford: Dave Snowden and others favour multiple not single gods as sources of thinking and reacting and being in the world. 01:05:26 Wendy Elford: You have other models through OTHER gods to work with 01:06:00 Wendy McLean, NY: +1 Wendy E… 01:06:00 Klaus Mager: call it believe systems 01:06:04 Pete Kaminski: I wonder if Western religion is a "tool" that Western civilization made? 01:06:13 Marc-Antoine Parent: In Hindu belief also, the creator God (Brahma) is not very important. (Also see the demiurgic/god distinction in gnosticism) 01:06:31 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Belief systems works for me far better than religion - thanks!🙏🏼 01:06:33 Wendy Elford: Religion brought us property ownership in new ways which left us in a world of pain. 01:06:52 Marc-Antoine Parent: Wendy: you mean monotheism ;-) 01:07:20 Wendy Elford: Yes - monotheism is problematic - only one model to set up value system 01:07:30 Marc-Antoine Parent: and only one right answer. 01:07:50 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: What kind of reactions did people have to Kandironk’s (sp?) take on money? 01:08:12 Pete Kaminski: "Kandiaronk" 01:09:30 Wendy Elford: Collective action is situated in a time and a place - it is context sensitive. 01:09:46 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Thanks Pete! 01:12:29 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: And, to tie Sand Talk in here, Tyson makes the distinction between high context societies - which are orate - and low context societies which are literate. The latter has dire consequences as it allows people to act without the need to understand context and we get the current state of the world as an example of how well it works. What would a culture that blended both high and low context look like? 01:13:29 Wendy McLean, NY: Nice question, Ken! Both/And 01:13:58 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: 🙏🏼 It’s clear we can’t go back - so forward needs to blend… 01:16:02 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Blending a bit more: here is something from Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years: “Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:

'Up in our country we are human!' said the hunter. 'And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.' 01:16:37 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: ... The refusal to calculate credits and debits can be found throughout the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting societies. Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began "comparing power with power, measuring, calculating" and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt. 01:16:46 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: It's not that he, like untold millions of similar egalitarian spirits throughout history, was unaware that humans have a propensity to calculate. If he wasn't aware of it, he could not have said what he did. Of course we have a propensity to calculate. We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization.” 01:17:09 Wendy McLean, NY: And why go back? What’s the better possibility that can come from the blend, that wasn’t available to either one individually? 01:17:40 Wendy Elford: In many places I can’t see any more the nature that prompted the design of our languages, our materiality and from that our thinking existing now. We are using words that came from a long time ago in the way we exchange options over a very different time and place - language is not keeping up with our our current options 01:18:32 Wendy Elford: Dave Snowden talks about the importance of localised empathy 01:19:09 Hank Kune: The Davids even bring in a 18th century conspiracy theory: that the Jesuits introduced ‘dangerous ideas’ as a means to to instigate the French Evolution 01:19:10 Wendy Elford: He references the power shift occurring seasonally according to the context specific needs for leadership 01:20:17 Marc-Antoine Parent: name of author? the title does not google well 01:21:31 Marc-Antoine Parent: ah it's in the HackMD 01:21:38 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: “The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical... There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin 01:21:56 Wendy Elford: Our technologies allow us to ignore the seasons so we don’t have the need for us to practice shifting powers seasonally - we have to be ‘shoved’ by words and numbers that suggest there is a crisis. 01:21:56 Marc-Antoine Parent: Indeed! 01:22:17 Hank Kune: @Klaus +1 01:22:26 Klaus Mager: https://satyagraha.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/pitirim-sorkin-crisis-of-modernity/ 01:23:28 Klaus Mager: Crises of Transition

As a Sensate or Ideational culture reaches a certain point of decline, social and economic crises mark the beginning of transition to a new mentality. These crises occur partly because, as the dominant paradigm reaches its late decadent stages, its institutions try unsuccessfully to adapt, taking ever more drastic measures. However, responses to crises tend to make things worse, leading to new crises. Expansion of government control is an inevitable by-product: 01:24:26 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: "Over the years, leaders consistently have chosen power rather than productivity. They would rather be in control than have the organization work at optimal efficiency. And now there's another belief surfacing: When risk runs high, power must be wielded by only a few people. Just the opposite is true. Reflective leaders, including those in the military, have learned that the higher the risk, the more we need everyone's commitment and intelligence." ~Margaret Wheatley 01:24:38 Klaus Mager: “The main uniform effect of calamities upon the political and social structure of society is an expansion of governmental regulation, regimentation, and control of social relationships and a decrease in the regulation and management of social relationships by individuals and private groups. The expansion of governmental control and regulation assumes a variety of forms, embracing socialistic or communistic totalitarianism, fascist totalitarianism, monarchial autocracy, and theocracy. 01:25:22 Klaus Mager: Fortunately for all the societies which do not perish in this sort of transition from one basic order to another, the disintegration process often generates the emergence of mobilization of forces opposed to it. Weak and insignificant at the beginning, these forces slowly grow and then start not only to fight the disintegration but also to plan and then to build a new sociocultural order which can meet more adequately the gigantic challenge of the critical transition and of the post-transitory future. This process of emergence and growth of the forces planning and building the new order has also appeared and is slowly developing now…. 01:25:29 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Close quotes from chapter two: You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to everyone and that the Earth itself belongs to no one.

Original sense of communism - from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs. Minimal baseline communism that applies in all societies: if a person is drowning and the cost of helping is nothing more than throwing them a rope any decent person would comply. This can be considered the grounds of human sociability. How far should baseline communism extend? For the 17th C French it didn’t extend very far.

Societies of the NE woodlands guaranteed everyone the means to an autonomous life. 01:26:28 Hank Kune: Wendy M: Indigenous cultures assuming conversation will continue until consensus is achieved. 01:27:25 Wendy Elford: Book - the quiet before 01:27:53 Pete Kaminski: The Quiet Before by Gal Beckerman 01:32:02 Marc-Antoine Parent: I would not say it's undefined, but it's multiply defined. 01:32:12 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: +1 01:32:24 Wendy Elford: Our neurology is set up for detecting and working with differences. Equivalence is a fraught concept 01:32:57 Hank Kune: @ Ken: this is the final discussion in the chapter – what does ‘equality’ mean? Equal access to … equal under the law. . .equally free from . . .equal opportunity? 01:33:07 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Suggestion for critique: I liked.., I wish.. I wonder 01:35:45 Wendy Elford: We should / could do a gardening session in parallel or between fortnight meetings 01:37:23 Marc-Antoine Parent: Sorry... I did try to make it short so we could move on but that also got carried away there 01:40:03 Wendy McLean, NY: That off week could also be for administrative and tech onboarding. 01:41:03 Pete Kaminski: yep 01:41:10 Michael Grossman (he/him) Factr.com: +1 Wendy 01:42:23 Wendy McLean, NY: I think both can happen in the same meeting! I think it’s so important to allow both to happen naturally and organcally 01:44:05 Marc-Antoine Parent: Agenda proposals 01:44:15 Hank Kune: +1 01:44:19 Marc-Antoine Parent: Including questions about close reading maybe 01:44:19 Wendy McLean, NY: +1 Michael, love that as a check-in. Allows for what is emerging in the moment 01:44:27 Wendy Elford: This is how the yarning process is working 01:45:21 Wendy McLean, NY: Yes! Agree Wendy E…. It’s the intersection 01:46:25 Wendy McLean, NY: A bit of friction for me. Yes, to google docs 01:47:00 Wendy Elford: I felt I could put in big questions though - they were emergent and important 01:47:04 Wendy McLean, NY: But I can deal, because I can see the potential benefits 01:47:25 Wendy McLean, NY: I just have difficulty doing it during the meetings 01:47:50 Marc-Antoine Parent: I do not have strong preference on googledoc vs hackmd (but I'm happy with the latter) 01:49:07 Michael Grossman (he/him) Factr.com: Inserting big questions was easy enough, general note-taking was not as appealing as G-notes 01:50:29 Marc-Antoine Parent: Have to go now unfortunately... 01:51:14 Wendy McLean, NY: Bye! Have to go too! Thank you! 01:55:50 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: a friend of mine often says: I am really curious to hear what I am going to say on this topic😉 01:56:04 Michael Grossman (he/him) Factr.com: Love that Ken 01:57:15 Pete Kaminski: life and conversations, lived like a museum or lived like a performance. 01:58:27 Hank Kune: Becoming Animal 01:59:07 Hank Kune: https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Animal-Cosmology-David-Abram/dp/0375713697 02:00:16 Hank Kune: Patterns of sound, in the third round, in World Cafes 02:00:45 Hank Kune: Fractal patters. Patterns worth paying attention to 02:01:00 Wendy Elford: This sound pattern is recorded in the work of technology - Pete - whose work from Ireland - the person that Kilu talks about 02:01:41 Pete Kaminski: "group epiphenomena" 02:02:14 Hank Kune: The emergent phenomena (epiphenomena) – and then: people appreciate being in the group 02:05:29 Hank Kune: Wendy: We collectively own this ‘thing’ - we’re not going to take it out of each others’ hands - even without the language to converge, we know we own it collectively 02:07:37 Pete Kaminski: More generally, second-order cybernetics is the reflexive practice of cybernetics, where cyberneticians understand themselves and other participants to be part of the systems they study and act in, taking a second-order position whether or not it is termed as such. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_cybernetics 02:10:50 Hank Kune: Shanghai ghetto – the Jews who escaped Europe and lived in Shanghai Shanghai Ghetto 2002 https://www.amazon.com/Shanghai-Ghetto-Irene-Eber/dp/B0010ER7WE 02:12:40 Hank Kune: Wendy: Everyone has shifted from place to place, the only thing that connects us to the planet is the national environment. And this ism disappearing 02:13:10 Pete Kaminski: "You can't create complexity. It has to emerge and it emerges over time." [it takes time to emerge] 02:15:08 Pete Kaminski: https://loobymacnamara.com/people-and-permaculture/ 02:15:34 Hank Kune: Michael Mead: gardening as a way to bow and touch the earth 02:16:05 Pete Kaminski: michael meade, gardening, it's a way to bow and touch the earth 02:17:38 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Related: Walking Through a Wall by Louis Jenkins.

Unlike flying or astral projection, walking through walls is a totally earth-related craft, but a lot more interesting than pot making or driftwood lamps. I got started at a picnic up in Bowstring in the northern part of the state. A fellow walked through a brick wall right there in the park. I said, 'Say, I want to try that.' Stone walls are best, then brick and wood. 02:17:45 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: Wooden walls with fiberglass insulation and steel doors aren't so good. They won't hurt you. If your wall walking is done properly, both you and the wall are left intact. It is just that they aren't pleasant somehow. The worst things are wire fences, maybe it's the molecular structure of the alloy or just the amount of give in a fence, I don't know, but I've torn my jacket and lost my hat in a lot of fences. The best approach to a wall is, first, two hands placed flat against the surface; it's a matter of concentration and just the right pressure. You will feel the dry, cool inner wall with your fingers, then there is a moment of total darkness before you step through on the other side. 02:18:26 doug carmichael: https://douglasscarmichael.substack.com/p/gardenworld-politics-chapters?s=w 02:21:21 Wendy Elford: And Christopher Alexander - importance of how might we make a place that allows us to FEEL 02:21:33 Ken Homer • SF Bay Area •: I have to go - this was delicious!🙏🏼 02:21:44 Michael Grossman (he/him) Factr.com: Sadly, I have to jump as well…Thank you everyone!