Daily pages - September 10, 2021

I had a realization last night that what I’m calling Change Vectors are not just a way of thinking about where we’re trying to go, but an actual method for moving forward (in the direction of the vector, presumably). In our Creative Practice, the idea is to take Small Steps along one or more of these vectors. Transform some aspect of humans, world or Earth in the direction of improvement, which is really what we mean by these change vectors. We want to move away from one thing that less desirable and toward another thing which we’re defining as being an improvement.

What goes along with that is that it can be used to check what you’re doing, as long as you buy into the idea that these vectors are the moral or correct way to go. If I’m about to create a Tik Tok that moves the viewer away from tolerance and toward intolerance, I might want to really reconsider making that. If, on the other hand, it encourages people to accept themselves more fully, then that helps move us in the right direction.

Built into this is that individually, we may no have a huge amount of power (though, of we’re willing to take on the responsibility, we can have as much power as we want… maybe), but the more of us doing these kinds of things and growing ourselves toward these positives, the more the combined actions can affect the world. It is rather atomic at its core idea, but we can do the same thing with molecules on up and make big changes that move us along these change vectors in many ways.

The other aspect of this was the idea that many (if not all) the patterns have a change vector associated with them, and I’m wondering if I might want to include that explicitly in the pattern text, maybe just below the tagline, or maybe even replacing the tagline.

For example, Abundance might say “Away from scarcity, toward abundance.” And the Uncertain Knowing pattern might say “Away from certainty, toward uncertainty.” I wonder if I should use “greater” in these: “Away from certainty, toward greater uncertainty.” Or I could keep it simpler, more like a mathematical expression like I use in my notes: certainty → uncertainty. Or I also thought that I could highlight the main words like Away from scarcity, toward _abundance._

I could even see having multiple vectors in a pattern. The Global Civilization pattern already outlines four vectors: sub-global → global, centralized → decentralized, top-down power → flat power, finite games → infinite games.

I had an ongoing dream last night about an object that in my dream, seemed to be an important tool in learning, remembering and applying the patterns from the book. When I woke up, however, the idea didn’t seem all that valuable. I’m just going to describe it here while I remember it.

I would describe the objects as multi-layered pendants or talisman. They consisted of a small (maybe a couple of inches long) leaf-shaped piece in the center. It was fairly flat, and in my dream, I saw them being printed in a 3D printer. I got the impression that they had text on them, but not lots of text, just a few words (possibly the pattern name). I remember wondering in my dream if the 3D printer had the resolution to print that kind of tex; some of it had to be fairly small because the leaf was small and some of the names are long (I guess).

The edges around the leaf were kind of rough, with some points sticking out, like a serrated leaf might look, but each serration seemed to have a meaning. Maybe they were the interconnection points, I don’t know. There seemed to one point that was more of a little cylinder, and that seemed to be where you would tie a thin string or yarn.

I remember it being like yarn, but not the thick kind, but it could have been string. And this yarn was tied to the cylinder and then wrapped around the leaf. In my dream the wrapping pattern was not clear, but it seemed like it should be wrapped according to some meaning or logic. I think the idea was to represent the interconnections that this leaf has with all the others, but I may have added that idea after I woke up. It seems like there was a lot of yarn that crossed in the middle, so the leaf shape started to become more 3-dimensional.

Then, I think the person who made the pendent or talisman wore it around their neck. It seemed important that a person make each of these for themself, not someone else. I got the impression that this was a popular thing to do, like a fad that was spreading.

I don’t know what it means, but I suppose I could try to develop it as a way of spreading the ideas around. It seems difficult to imagine that it would catch on, but if it had enough meaning, maybe it would.