Challenge

He trains like this: contemplating impermanence I will breathe in, he trains like this: contemplating impermanence I will breathe out.

Part of the challenge for us, as for all writers, is to know who our audience is (cf. Academic Peer Review). Are we writing for teachers, or philosophers? For students, or for the popular press? The proliferation of options and possibilities is somewhat exhausting.

Since this essay falls within the "practice" section, it's probably a reasonable bet to think that we are, in the first place, writing for ourselves -- aiming to create a manual that describes and helps with our own learning process as we work on paragogy.net and on other tasks in our own lives.

"In the situated learning and communities of practice point of view, 'learning was shown to be an inevitable aspect of all productive practices' (Engeström)."

And so life goes on, we produce lots of words, and they go out into the world's word-stream. Some people here and there read these words and they may have an effect. The human world, like an organism, is full of communication processes; the written word plays a role that is in some way comparable to cytokines in the body.

While I don't agree completely with this paragraph, I'll quote it at length:

"And in addition, if you look at the time scales that's involved here-- two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it-- you're beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then when you get to agricultural, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you’re looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years.  You're seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time.  What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it's gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself... within our lifetime, within this generation.  The new evolution stems from information, and it stems from two types of information: digital and analog.  The digital is artificial intelligence.  The analog results from molecular biology, the cloning of the organism.  And you knit the two together with neurobiology. Before on the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow and dominate. But under the new paradigm, they would exist... as a mutually supportive, noncompetitive grouping, independent from the external. And what is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process, emanating from the needs and the desires of the individual, and not an external process, a passive process... where the individual is just at the whim of the collective. So, you produce a neo-human with a new individuality and a new consciousness. But that's only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle... because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes. Until what? Until you reach a crescendo in a way... it could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human, human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space. And the manifestations of this neo-human-type evolution, manifestations could be dramatically counter-intuitive. That's the interesting part. The old evolution is cold. It's sterile. It's efficient, okay? And its manifestations are those social adaptations. You're talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, okay? War, predation. These would [now] be subject to de-emphasis. These would be subject to de-evolution. The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty, of justice, of freedom. These will be the manifestations of the new evolution. That is what we would hope to see from this. That would be nice." -- Eamonn Healy, in Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" (2001)

This seems like a good way to get at "impermanence" -- but I think it misses some basic things about evolution, the nature of horizontal gene transfer, for example. Nothing ever really happens "independent from the external". Among other things, Healy's "new individuality" is at odds with the "post-individual human" (cf Sherry Turkle, "Alone Together"). The phenomenology of this sort of mind is in some sense the proper target of paragogy. Note that we are not talking about some sort of "universal mind" or an integrated whole (see Connections).

Regarding Sherry Turkle's book, here's an anecdote. My housemate was talking about a conversation with her friend. The friend had been saying, I got together with my family recently and all we were doing was sitting around on our laptops, we weren't talking with each other. And my housemate said, yeah, this happened when I got together with my family recently too. And now, here I am, writing about their conversation. There's something about "uploading information" that seems fun and interesting, though it is embodied in a very different kind of "moment" from the typical family gathering. This disturbing video for a David Lynch song may capture the dystopic flavor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IugOfDBWcGc

He trains like this: contemplating dispassion I will breathe in, he trains like this: contemplating dispassion I will breathe out.

Investigations in paragogy may in some ways resemble investigations in parapsychology, but without the hokum. Instead of looking for psychic abilities, we would instead look at real, documented, communication events. It is potentially less interesting to document "spooky effects" like yesterday's crossword puzzle's being easier to solve than today's than it is to try and get some impression of where people get their ideas from in concrete, experiential, ways.

Where do good intentions go to? Where does actual productivity come from? It's not just a matter of pomodoro technique or getting things done, though these systems (designed for the standard "individual) do, no doubt, relate.

The 43folders summary of Getting Things Done is:


 * 1) identify all the stuff in your life that isn’t in the right place (close all open loops)
 * 2) get rid of the stuff that isn’t yours or you don’t need right now
 * 3) create a right place that you trust and that supports your working style and values
 * 4) put your stuff in the right place, consistently
 * 5) do your stuff in a way that honors your time, your energy, and the context of any given moment
 * 6) iterate and refactor mercilessly

Note a sort of skew-symmetry of the first five principles with the paragogy principles. We are all existing in contexts that may or may not have a whole lot to do with "us". If we learn how to moderate these contexts in a way that works for how we work, we tend to feel better and more adaptive. If we work with the right set of supports, things go better than they would otherwise. Maintaining this supportive context is an ongoing process. Once we have all of this going nicely, we've realized the dream (in this case, the "productivity" dream).

This reading of the fourth principle stands out as an example of an evolved adaptive behavior: "nest-building", as discussed by C. G. Jung -- by now a necessary adjunct to procreation in humans. In the context of GTD, we might say that once everything else is out of the way, there will be nothing left to do but be productive. But when and how does that really happen?

What research methods are most appropriate to studying these questions without getting weird about it? Some ideas for this are outlined in the PlanetMath case study, but they could be made more precise, and generalized for other settings. We can imagine that, worst case scenario, as a reflection on the process, paragogy itself represents an amplification and re-valorization of the distracting elements that need to be cleared away in order for "real work" to happen -- a sort of "navel gazing" or an overly "processy" way of relating to one's life's work; in effect, a sort of self-disabling through frittering away of anxious energy. To look at this more positively, a "science of procrastination" or even simply a mutual aid group, "Cunctator's Universal Network and Triage Cooperative" (name created by my friend Tim) that would look at things like chatting on Facebook while doing homework without the judgmental lens -- might help people understand the current human, particularly in his/her incubatory aspects.

=Recommended Reading=


 * http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848313063/rupertsheldrak0e/ "The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature" - reading the Amazon comments may be enough
 * http://www.the-cauldron.org.uk/averyenglishwitch.htm A curious coincidence. (Studying the existence and effects of coincidences is presumably where paragogy and parapsychology have their interface.)
 * http://www.intentionalhappiness.com/articles/July-2009/Incubators.pdf "In my coaching work I have dealt with a number of individuals who consider themselves chronic procrastinators. They often feel guilty that they take so long to engage with projects and frequently criticize their own performance. And yet, they all have in common that they are extraordinarily successful but most objective standards-- doctorate degrees, high incomes, productive at work, etc. This has led me to question whether they are really procrastinators or whether there might be a productive work style issue at hand."
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_time "African cultures are often described as 'polychronic', which means basically that people tend to manage more than one thing at a time rather than in a strict sequence. Personal interactions and relationships are also managed in this way (such that it is not uncommon, for instance, to have more than one simultaneous conversation). Perhaps for this reason, an African 'emotional time consciousness' has been suggested in contrast with Western 'mechanical time consciousness' as a way of understanding African time."
 * David Allen on Weird Time "In other words, you can't do things faster until you learn how to slow down. How do you slow down? It's all about the dynamic of detachment. You have to back off and be quiet. Retreat from the task at hand, so that you can gain a new perspective on what you're doing. If you get too wrapped up in all of the stuff coming at you, you lose your ability to respond appropriately and effectively."