Thread by @meekaale

this is GREAT

https://twitter.com/kev_mcg/status/1345573018005893122

really great fusion of Christopher Alexander with @Meaningness @vervaeke_john paradigms

can't not ping @Malcolm_Ocean on this, it's like mythic metaphor design using archetypes and sacred places which lead to emergent goals rooted in vivid fantasy

also love this emphasis on mysteries, like allowing life to revolve around questions without needing them to be answered finally or straightforwardly, they can still be centers of inquiry and activity

this reminds me of a passage in "After Virtue", which perhaps has a slightly different vibe because of its emphasis on narrative unity

"the medieval conception of a quest is not at all that of a search for something already adequately characterized, as miners search for gold and geologists for oil [...] a quest is always an education both as to the character of that which is sought and in self-knowledge"

so that clarifies a little confusion I have about goal-crafting

the centers of my life are open-ended and irresolvable

I can't always make goals as if my life is "already adequately characterized"

my striving has to include the need for self-amendment and discovery

I've already started to try to symbolize the "monsters" of my life, like these "demonic entities"

https://twitter.com/meekaale/status/1319513560763031552

some items are intrinsically beautiful and powerful in their centered salience, like the artifacts that radiate from every other page of Alexander's "The Nature of Order"

there is also salience from roles in activities, the quest items of life

https://twitter.com/djmicrobeads/status/1338436429148512256

"Just as a place can be a center of gravity that points toward particular activities and events, the crafted objects in our life might become touchpoints for entering mythic mode throughout the days and weeks of the game."

you have perfectly summarized everything I'm on about 🤩

as far as I can tell this framework is extremely valuable psychotechnology in the jargon of @vervaeke_john

I know there are lots of frameworks like tarot etc

but TO ME this seems extraordinarily applicable, non-sketchy, the perfect mix of secular and sacred, etc

like I was recently trying to get myself to be interested John Michael Greer's version of druid magic because it's a framework for enchanting the world devised by an intelligent modern person

but it was too cringe

I definitely admire Greer and sort of envy his "authentic" role within a practicing community of druid magic

and I like his way of saying that while philosophers have complained about the world's disenchantment, what we need to really do is to literally re-enchant it

but ultimately I just don't believe I can literally enchant the sketchy grove behind my workshop using a magic wand ritual and homeopathic potions

the thing about putting up big sacred stones is pretty cool though

here we also see a clear resonance with the kind of secular polysacral enchantment of daily life that Hubert Dreyfus talks about in "All Things Shining"

here is Dreyfus about rituals of coffee

https://twitter.com/meekaale/status/1339498845290565640

and here is @kev_mcg making it clear how Christopher Alexander's style of enhancing the centers in the environment inspired by patterns is a way of reenchanting the world in a direct, material, pushing-atoms-around kind of way

and a good reminder that creating centers of life doesn't always depend on architecture or moving things, it's also a matter of perceiving and enacting on a more personal level

this hooks up to what Dreyfus describes as "beings swept up into public and shareable moods" that can be nurtured and evoked with gratitude and attunement, but not created by imposition and fiat

https://twitter.com/meekaale/status/1327868574770360320

failed fiat creation of a shared mood is basically the definition of cringe, as explained by Sarah Perry

https://twitter.com/meekaale/status/1339095003457593346

oh a stray thought that has been on my mind for a while that's a bit funny

if I look at houses as fields of centers, it seems to me that "sinks and sources" are powerful nodes

in particular this leads to a suspicion that we should treat toilets and faucets as very significant

the multiplayer aspect of mythic pattern enaction is basically what I find fascinating about Alasdair MacIntyre's conception of the narrative unity of lives within communities and traditions

so for me this is maybe the very central sentence of MacIntyre's After Virtue:

"Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words."

so @kev_mcg's game strikes me as an approach to MacIntyrean narrative beauty that can grow out from the situation that @Meaningness calls atomization, a viable and workable path for soothing our own unscripted stuttering anxiety

it has a more useful and relevant vibe by being grounded in actual fun practices like role-playing games and Minecraft without any stench of neo-Aristotelian nostalgia or Cath-trad RETVRN ideology

https://twitter.com/meekaale/status/1345320700329029634

relevant

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