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This weekend

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This weekend's reading

Where Value Touches Ground

A weekend at the boundary where thermodynamics stops being physics and starts being theology.

  • ◇Value Is Not Arbitrary: Its Thermodynamic Roots in Existence Itself
  • ◇The Sacred as Thermodynamic Necessity in Complex Societies
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This weekend

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Lit on the map

Where Value Touches Ground

A weekend at the boundary where thermodynamics stops being physics and starts being theology.

Meaning CrisisRelevance RealizationProcess PhilosophyPhenomenologyConsciousness Studies
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This weekend's question

Where Value Touches Ground

“If mattering is thermodynamic before it is psychological, what does that do to the distinction between sacred and secular?”

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This weekend's quest

Where Value Touches Ground

Something is holding the universe together that isn't gravity. Three thinkers trace value from its thermodynamic floor to its sacred ceiling. Your task is to find the joints — the places where physics becomes meaning and meaning becomes obligation. The map has seven edges. Not all of them point in the direction you'd expect.

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  1. Observers
  2. ›Nora Bateson
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Nora Bateson

Systems thinking, symmathesy, warm data — contextual mutual learning in living systems and the relational complexity beneath social and ecological crises

International Bateson Institute
13 ideas47 connections

Nora Bateson is a filmmaker, writer, and systems thinker who serves as Founder and President of the International Bateson Institute, carrying forward the intellectual legacy of her father, Gregory Bateson. She coined the concept of symmathesy — contextual mutual learning within living systems — and developed the Warm Data methodology for illuminating the relational complexity underlying social and ecological challenges. Her book Small Arcs of Larger Circles and her documentary An Ecology of Mind have established her as a leading voice at the intersection of systems theory and ecology.

XLinkedInSubstackWebsite ↗

Topics

Systems Thinking10
Sensemaking7
Relational Ontology6
Epistemology6
Cultural Evolution3
Meta-Crisis3
Complexity Science2
Existential Risk2

Connected Observers

Zak Stein7Rufus Pollock4Brendan Graham Dempsey4John Vervaeke3Tyson Yunkaporta2Bonnitta Roy

Ideas in the Observatory

  • How Words Encode Worldviews: The Hidden Ontology of Everyday Language
    How Words Encode Worldviews: The Hidden Ontology of Everyday LanguageThe groove you didn't know you were already in.
    I
  • How Radical Commitments Become Adoptable Identities
    How Radical Commitments Become Adoptable IdentitiesThe meme ate the fire.
    I

Links

X / TwitterLinkedInSubstackWebsite
Process Philosophy1
Philosophy of Mind1
Consciousness Studies1
Embodied Cognition1
Collective Intelligence1
Ethics1
Meaning Crisis1
Ecology1
Political Philosophy1
Civilizational Risk1
Hermeneutics1
Ontological Design1
2
  • Why Fixing Problems One at a Time Makes Everything Worse
    Why Fixing Problems One at a Time Makes Everything WorseThe committee never reaches the nursing mother.
    I
  • Symmathesy: How Living Systems Continuously Learn Together
    Symmathesy: How Living Systems Continuously Learn TogetherThe crooked tree was never broken
    I
  • How Outcome-Driven Thinking Destroys the Ecology It Claims to Heal
    How Outcome-Driven Thinking Destroys the Ecology It Claims to HealThe moment you name the harvest, you kill the soil.
    I
  • Why Ladder Thinking Fails: Extraction, Dominance, and the Limits of Progress
    Why Ladder Thinking Fails: Extraction, Dominance, and the Limits of ProgressYou cannot get the grapes out of the wine.
    I
  • Three Ways Relationships Destroy Themselves, and What Keeps Them Alive
    Three Ways Relationships Destroy Themselves, and What Keeps Them AliveThe heart does not negotiate with the feet.
    I
  • How Urgency Destroys the Complexity Needed to Address Crisis
    How Urgency Destroys the Complexity Needed to Address CrisisEvery solution is yesterday's catastrophe.
    I
  • Warm Data: How Meaning Emerges From Disorientation and Entanglement
    Warm Data: How Meaning Emerges From Disorientation and EntanglementSense made from sense already made.
    I
  • Why Climate Strategy Keeps Solving the Wrong Problem
    Why Climate Strategy Keeps Solving the Wrong ProblemYou cannot see the tree you are camouflaged into.
    I
  • How Infrastructure Capture Repeats Across Every Technological Revolution
    How Infrastructure Capture Repeats Across Every Technological RevolutionWe were asking the wrong question again.
    I
  • How AI Mirrors Erode Epistemological Self-Awareness
    How AI Mirrors Erode Epistemological Self-AwarenessOf course it understands you. It is you.
    I
  • Communication as a Living Relational Ecosystem
    Communication as a Living Relational EcosystemBreaking the rows of the monoculture mind
    I

    • Topics

    Systems Thinking10
    Sensemaking7
    Relational Ontology6
    Epistemology6
    Cultural Evolution3
    Meta-Crisis3
    Complexity Science2
    Existential Risk2
    Process Philosophy1
    Philosophy of Mind1
    Consciousness Studies1
    Embodied Cognition1
    Collective Intelligence1
    Ethics1
    Meaning Crisis1
    Ecology1
    Political Philosophy1
    Civilizational Risk1
    Hermeneutics1
    Ontological Design1

    Connected Observers

    Zak Stein7Rufus Pollock4Brendan Graham Dempsey4John Vervaeke3Tyson Yunkaporta2Bonnitta Roy2
    ← All Observers