The model we choose to use to understand something determines what we find.
- Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
Detail of illustration for Amsterdam based theatre group Likeminds by Merijn Hos via
Before I get stuck into this edition of the Vocab, I would like to thank everybody that participated in last Sunday’s Virtua Playgrounds digital hangout. The conversation was very stimulating and it was exciting interacting with so many people from all over the world. For anyone that couldn’t make it and is interested in all that was discussed, the whole conversation can be viewed using this link over on Throne. I am looking forward to hosting more of these as I think the experiment that we are running as a result of this first one has been pretty inspiring so far. If you are curious about what we are up to, you can check out the Newtype Discord server channel here, there are a few more slots open for anyone interested in participating in this first experiment (based on the project I mentioned briefly in #3).
I look forward to seeing what lasting connections emerge from it.
If there is a such a thing as a seed of Newtype metaphysics, I would say it is exploring alternative modes of thinking and being. How we think and how we live in the world (and allow the world to live in us) is the substrate on which we grow everything else in our lives. But for some reason, it has become a very shallow space of inquiry and lived engagement in our society outside of academia.
Most of us take this state of affairs for granted and instead focus on the adoption and expression of concepts that sit on top of this assumption, not realising that it is this base layer that influences the sorts of concepts we can even have or be aware of.
We seem to be trapped in a theatrical mode, acting out the same scenes all over the world, our roles seemingly predetermined for us, with scripts updated regularly via social media or whatever other sources of news and/or authority we have access to that aligns with who we believe society wants us to be.
Not only do we have less agency, our actions and reactions seemingly constructed from an emergent series of algorithms, our capacity to notice what is around us is also being diminished. The world has become a place filled with re-presentations of our inner prejudices and assumptions about it, a shallow simulation that we interact with the way a gambler may interact with a slot machine. It only becomes noticeable when we win the jackpot or we run out of coins.
What is scary about losing the capacity to notice is that we eventually stop noticing we aren’t noticing and the result, devoid of dynamism and agency becomes our norm. It even becomes safe and comforting, we reject anything different and struggle to accept reality as it presents itself. We do this in our relationships when we simplify our family, friends and partners to characters in our minds; when we divide ourselves and others into different ideologies and identity groups; and when we reduce discourse about the economy to one solely about the movement of money.
Newtype is inspired by the idea that not only is it important to leave this way of thinking and being, it is important to “escape” into a diversity of ways, all of them equally valid and rich in their own contexts. I feel that in order to expand the possibilities available to us, it is important to adopt a perspective that is inherently more expansive.
I hope you enjoy this edition of the Vocab. Remember, listen to yourself and take things at your own pace. Kindness and care should go inwards as well as to others and neither should be rushed. Be safe.
The Vocab
Thinking and Being
Every thing has a consciousness and this makes every thing a being. Beings exist in relationships with other beings and yet remain ultimately unknowable. This is a form of wisdom.
- Newtype Sutra IV
Thinking is the act, deliberate or otherwise, of engaging with a concept, material, stimulus or activity in a way that creates a space of opportunity for the emergence of knowledge, action or further thinking.
It is a means of interacting with and generating raw information that generates novel forms and can initiate and reinforce further interactions in the same vein. The quality of subsequent interactions and that of the information that is engaged with is usually affected by this process.
Being in this context is a substrate atop which thinking is performed. The state of mind and memory, the state of the body, the state of the environment, the state of other beings; all of these contribute to a state of being-ness.
Accompanying our current focus on progress, productivity and efficiency is a gradual and institutionalised obliteration of the connected self. This new version of the individual is just a mind housed in a body looking out at the world waiting for inputs. This makes for an ideal worker and consumer, but not, a great human being.
This way of being influences how we think implicitly. In the way a spider thinks differently from a blue whale, an isolated mind will think differently from one that is more aware of its connectedness. The latter becomes more open to complexity and more humble about its place in it. Response-able without being authoritarian.
Thinking also leads to knowledge. The type of knowledge that emerges is also dependent on the type of thought that gave rise to it. Knowledge gained through theoretical thought is different from knowledge gained through thinking through praxis.
This inherently means there are whole swathes of knowledge unknown to most of us that privilege one mode of thinking over another (or have it done for us).
If we accept that diversity is an inherently good thing, providing as it does the capacity for adaptability, then it follows that all of us should relearn how to think with our bodies and the world not just our minds even if only for purely utilitarian reasons. Through discourse with others; through the sensations of our fingertips and the light hitting our retinas; the smell of cooking food letting us know to add a bit more of “something” before our conscious minds can figure out what; our experiences working hand in hand with tools enabling us to create art.
This form of thinking requires an openness and a presence in the world and with other beings that most of us have to relearn. We must become as children once more, but with an increased capacity for deliberate and flexible attention.
Context
Thinking is itself a form of play. To think well, one must be present in themselves and in the world.
As much as possible, we should engage in thinking and being intentional. Where are we? What are we feeling now? Who or what are we having a discourse with?
Being involves openness to being changed by the world. Being-ness is a dynamic process. There is no static being, only the being that is here right now as a confluence of everything around temporally and spatially.
Notes
Learning to change our ways of thinking and being require first an unlearning process. We must not hurry through this as it is critical to clear the ground thoroughly before we start a new planting.
It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.
- Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
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Library Recommendations
The Master, his Emissary & the Meaning Crisis, Iain McGilchrist & John Vervaeke - This is an amazing discussion. If you only click one link in this edition, make sure it is this one.
The Side View podcast - Interview with Bonnitta Roy
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Newtype is based in Lagos, Nigeria but is available to work in wisdom ecologies all over the world. If any of this resonates with you, I am available for talks, workshops, consulting and organisational strategy.
The Newtype Vocab is work produced by Yegwa Ukpo under aCC-BY-SAlicense. So please use it however you like without asking permission: just give credit, and use the same license for derivative works.