Practice Session #46

Welcome to my show notes for this week’s session of Practice!

We record these sessions every Sunday. I try to publish the audio on the same day of recording, but once in a while, I may get delayed due to various reasons.

Also, I will usually have the AI-generated transcript and my initial notes published on the same day of recording as well. On Fridays, I’ll (try to) go back through and proof the transcript while I add all of my notes.

I’ll be utilizing this opportunity to clarify and elaborate on points that I may not have conveyed as well as I would’ve liked to. I’ll also provide links to further information and resources.

So, on Friday, I’ll intersperse all my notes with the transcription from the audio below (unless I don’t 🤷).

Intro.

[00:00]

CK: Alrighty. Ready? Here we go.

Heyo! I’m CK, and you’re listening to Practice. I’m your functional systems integrator, and this is my podcast where practice is not just the theme of the show, but the whole purpose behind it. What started out as a practice of podcasting, as well as speaking in general, has evolved into a practice of self-coaching and self-reflection while espousing half-thoughts and providing unsolicited advice.

As always, I’m- I am fortunate to be joined by…

Pam: Did you almost say “unfortunate?”

CK: I did… My Practice partner and partner in life: Pam.

Pam: Hey, that’s me.

CK: Pam is also my pattern awareness manager, and every Sunday we reflect on the past week and my progress with this practice, along with other lifestyle practices, as well as theories and ideas behind the virtues of practice itself.

We’re doing this on the fly, and our dialogue here is unedited, so don’t hold me responsible for what I say here. Make sure to check out my show notes where I’ll provide some fact-checking, self-psychoanalysis and commentary on things I could have done better. You may find this and more information about this project at ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice.

Catch up with the Anomaly and the Linchpin.

CK: Almost slipped up there. I think I caught myself in time.

Pam: Now we know how you really feel.

CK: So we’re recording today on Sunday, January 10th, 2021. And this is practice session number 46, and you may be hearing our neighbor’s dog. Quite whining barky when the neighbors leave. So it must have some kind of separation anxiety or something, and the sun seems to be leaking through. So it’s the dog and we’ll get into the quote for this week.

And it comes from Seneca who I’ve quoted many times before stoic philosopher from ancient times. And I think I. Probably quoted Seneca more than anyone else so far. So dude’s pretty wise. So the quote goes like this, nothing is burdensome if taken lightly and nothing neat around is one’s irritation so long as one, doesn’t make it bigger than it is by getting irritated.

And it’s pretty straightforward and it’s very similar to a lot of other quotes that I’ve recited before. And of course it has a lot to do with mindset and your perspective and how you frame things. And it’s. Pretty pertinent for this week because things are pretty crazy in a marriage. And I really don’t want to get into that stuff too much.

You know, there’s a lot of it, the media and I don’t like, I really don’t know how to wrap my head around it just yet. And in a lot of ways I’ve been distracting myself from it, but in a lot of other ways, I’ve been learning a lot from it. So there’s a duality there, but let’s see where this takes us. Um, I don’t know. I just, this past week it feels like it’s been so long. There’s

Pam: the last three weeks have really like, every time we recorded, like it’s only been a week. And, but like in a good way, like, I don’t know. I like it when time doesn’t fly by. I like it when things feel slow and long,

CK: yeah, that’s true. And in some respects, it feels that way to me, because I got a lot of stuff done. And in other respects it feels that way to me, because a lot of stuff has happened in the world.

Pam: Yeah. That’s true.

CK: Yeah. And so, yeah, it’s just, it’s, it’s felt like a long week and a lot of stuff is going on and. A lot of it has to do with just human behavior and society in general.

And so the stuff I want to talk about or try to talk about would be in that realm in terms of human behavior and systems and what I kind of been learning from all the stuff that’s been happening on that end. So. Okay. So I, I’m kind of hesitant to talk about this stuff because I still haven’t developed it completely yet, but it’s around my own functional systems integration and my vast awareness framework.

And I’ve made a lot of progress in. Developing it this past week because of everything that’s been going on and what that’s kind of spurred on in my mind and got my cognition going in relation to that stuff. And it’s interesting because this whole, I guess, era of the pandemic in general has.

Enlightened me to human behavior and the collective society in how the collective system is not exactly where I thought it was at. You know, there’s a lot of things coming up out of all this stuff going on. And a lot of things that have kind of been tamped down or hidden or not as apparent. And the kind of stuff I’m talking about is like the structural racism and these antiquated notions of individualism and privilege and entitlement.

That’s just kind of coming up and it all kind of comes down to individualism versus collectivism. And, you know, I’m just thinking like in ancestral times there wasn’t really much individualism going on. You know, you needed the collective of the tribe to survive and prosper and individualism is more of a modern.

Development

such times as like, uh, uh, uh, I’m getting a little mixed up in history here, but like the German romantics kind of focused on individualism and the self and expressing the self. And,

you know, since that time, and of course. Industrialization, we’ve kind of developed more of our individualism and self-assertion, and we don’t need the collective, you know, it seems like we don’t need the collective in order to prosper individually. And I think like in more modern times, we’ve kind of fallen into that line of thinking like we are, we’re starting to lose the notion of the collective and the.

The like the system and how, you know, if the whole system is improved, that improves, everybody improves everything within the system versus, you know, if a part of that systems improved, then, you know, there’s. Different ways that that could affect the whole system. You know, it could be beneficial or it could be detrimental, you know, that, that just that part of the system has less effect on the whole system.

Um, shoot on that. So this is why I was hesitant about talking about this stuff, cause I don’t have it completely. Figured it out yet. All right. I don’t know how I want to talk about it yet, but I’m coming at it from a lot of different perspectives and I’m kind of cross associating a lot of different disciplines and philosophies, and this is kind of where everything’s been coming.

Coming out for me this past week where all these different things that I’ve been studying and learning about has all started to kind of converge. And I’m kind of, I’ve been able to make these associations that I think I was trying to figure out before. And like I thought there were associations, but I just couldn’t connect them, but I’m starting to connect those now.

And a lot of it comes down to. Dissonance in general and maybe more specifically cognitive dissonance and how, you know, from my perspective, the stuff that’s going on in more specifically, the stuff that happened at the Capitol, like I think I’m coming from the perspective that, you know, like, I can’t believe that that’s happening and there’s definitely.

A disparity between what happened at the Capitol. And for instance, what happened with the black lives matter movement there, you know, there’s definitely a contrast between similar type of events. And this is another thing like.

Pam: not similar at all.

CK: Well, what I’m saying? Yeah. Well, that’s the thing, like it is, it’s not similar at all, but like you can kind of compare and contrast the responses too. Um, so yeah,

Pam: I understand what you’re saying. I just want to make sure that no one thinks that you’re saying that BLM protests or in any way, domestic terror, because that’s what the attack on the Capitol was. That was domestic terror.

CK: Right. And that’s the thing, like, of course we’re talking about complex systems and these things aren’t the same, but there’s similar aspects that we can compare and contrast. But the bottom line is that they’re not the same. So at the end of the day, you can’t. Compare them as one to one, but just the concepts and notions that are coming out and like the differences in police response and, you know, opposing responses and stuff like that.

There’s definitely a disparity and a dissonance in, so yeah. I’ve always been about trying to understand the other side and trying to find a space or like a place of common ground where we can try to understand each other. In order to resolve our differences. And that’s the thing with dissonance, like dissonance is not comfortable.

It’s not, there’s something not right about it. It means that there’s something off, you know, it’s not lining up. And when you have cognitive dissonance, that’s when your beliefs don’t line up with the. Objective reality, like your subjective reality doesn’t line up with the objective reality or, or your subjective reality.

Doesn’t line up with someone else’s subjective reality, and there’s a dissonance there there’s like a uncomfortable or something that’s bothersome. And in order to resolve that, You need to find some kind of harmony between the two sides. And so I kind of relate this to music, you know, when you have two notes that clash that’s dissonance, and it’s a strategy used in music to create.

Uncomfortable, you know, a level of uncomfortability uncomfortable. Uh, what’s the word I’m looking for there? Is that a word? Okay. A level of uncomfortability, uh, what, you know, whatever that word is. Yeah. Okay. And once that, those clashing notes are resolved, that’s when. You feel good? Like that’s the portion of the music where you feel good and like uplifting and somethings, you know, it’s the resolution of the dissonance and there’s like an uplifting feeling.

And so we’re coming at this, you know, one side is one note and the other side is another note and those two notes are clashing. And we don’t necessarily need to find the same note. Obviously the stay notes harmonize with each other are not harmonized, but they resolve, but you can also harmonize with different notes that line up in, so a methodical fashion for lack of a better term.

So you don’t really.

Pam: how do you harmonize with Nazis?

CK: Well, that’s the thing you have to find. You have to figure that out. Like you can’t just continue the conflict and continue to dissonance because that’ll never resolve. And the differences that you have, like you like, so, you know, one side. Thinks the other side is crazy or stupid or makes no sense or incompetent, but the other side thinks the same way about your side.

And so if you guys, if you think there’s like that divide there, there’s no way we can create harmony. And so, first of all, you have to have the mindset that whatever you’re thinking and is much as you think you’re right. The other side thinks that way about their perspective.

Pam: Sure. But in this case, one side wants to kill people. And the other side does it, like, how do you, how do you middle-ground that?

CK: You have to find a place where you like have common ground or you can relate because when it comes down to it, there, you know, both sides have certain values that are rooted in. Human values. Like we’re all human and we all have certain needs and we ha we all have certain needs in terms of functioning in life. Period. Uh, not period, but, uh, so I don’t know how to explain this, but there’s fundamentals of life for every human and we all have as, as a human race, there’s fundamental values and there’s fundamentals in order for us to survive. And there’s fundamentals for us to prosper. And so the way we all go through life, we all have our own values.

And in some respects, those are rooted in fundamental values. So if we can find those fundamental values in, see where we can relate to each other with them and go from there. That’s where we’ll make progress. Like I, you know, I don’t know how, or I don’t know where or what they are. I mean, I think I do.

But, and I’m working on kind of articulating it and figuring out and creating a model for it. But I don’t know how to say it right now, but we have to find that that’s the only way we have to find a place where we can agree first, because if we don’t, then we’ll never resolve anything. So. We have to figure out the values and this kind of goes into my best awareness framework and I’ve kind of changed the V to stand for value or vectors, and I’m kind of leaning back toward vectors.

So vast standing for. Vectors of awareness across systems in time. And with vectors, I’m referring to spectral potentiality. So spectral, potentiality, meaning that, you know, there’s no, Y rather than binary. Reasons or binary solutions that, you know, there’s a spectrum of reasons or effects. So it’s not just black and white.

Yes or no, there’s maybes. And there’s the grays and stuff in between and all across the spectrum. And so with the vectors, there’s certain vectors within that spectrum. And these can be seen as like different dimensions or different. Lines across the spectrum. So for instance, one vector could be like the artificial versus natural vector.

And this is one of the most prominent vectors in my mind, the artificial versus natural vector. So on one side there’s artificial and on the other side of the spectrum, there’s natural. And you know, in ancestral times it’s. Been mostly toward the natural and of the vector because, you know, we hadn’t developed all these technologies and we lived by nature, but now we have all this technology and we’re kind of getting away from natural order.

With obviously internet and media and stuff. That’s kind of taken out as a sort of natural societal stuff. And there’s a trend going. Away from nature toward artificial constructs. And by doing that, we’re losing sight of humanity. So we’re obviously, I mean, diets a pretty easy example. We’re moving away from natural foods, more artificial foods and processed foods.

And you can see what’s going on in America. What more than two thirds of us citizens are considered obese and. That has, is largely due to the standard American diet, which is, which consists of lots of artificially processed foods. And if you move back more toward natural foods, there’s a natural macro nutrient profile, you know, naturally there’s a natural mix of nutrients that is. More balanced or synergistic with our bodies. It’s how our bodies evolved to eat. So by getting away from that, we’re getting away from progress. We’re kind of devolving in getting obese and unfit and unhealthy and sick and dying earlier. So we have to. Find the balance there. And, um, so in talking about functional systems integration, we have to integrate the, and of the vectors, the opposite sides of the spectrum.

So there, we need to find a balance between the artificial and natural and you know, I’m not gonna say we have to be. All natural or go extreme poor debt side of the spectrum because there’s a lot of good that’s come out of technology and artificial aspects of life. So we have to find the balance somewhere closer around the middle to balance the artificial and natural and integrate those two to optimize or create a more optimal progression.

So, you know, rather than having an extreme artificial progression versus an extreme natural progression, you know, both sides are you’re going to, it are not optimal, obviously artificial, you know, Like I talked about, you’re going to run into health issues and obesity and all that stuff. And if you stay natural, you know, you’ll probably be healthy and all that stuff, but you won’t benefit from all the technology and advancements that we’ve developed that can help you out even more so in integration of the two is the optimal point.

So we need to find a balance there. And the thing is if you’re lost or if you’re. Sub optimal in some manner, the kind of North star of that vector is the natural end. So. If you’re starting to feel dissonance in order to resolve that dissonance, you want to start going towards the natural end. And I don’t know if this is coming out as nicely as I want it to, but does that make sense?

Like yeah.

Pam: I 100% get what you’re saying. I just don’t know that you can apply that to people in the case that we’re

CK: Well, you know, I can’t apply it directly. And that’s the thing like I’m trying to develop a model and a framework here, and this is just one little slice of it, but we need to find harmony from dissonance. We need to become more natural in light of all these artificial constructs and we need to consider.

And balance objective reality with subjective reality and rationality with our emotions that, so that’s another vector, you know, the emotional versus rational factor where you can even associate emotional with. Subjectivity and rational with objectivity. So this could be the subjectivity to objectivity vector.

And in order to progress, you want an integration of the two, you know, you can’t be just all subjective and you don’t want to be all objective because if you’re all objective, then there’s no self assertion. There’s no creativity. And that thus there’s no progress or innovation. But if you’re all subjective, then there’s no regard to the super systems or the collective, and it’s just all ego.

So you need to have a balance and an integration of those, but in order to progress, there’s a side of those vectors that you want to use as your North star. And so between subjective and objective, the North star should be an objective reality, which is part of the super system. And of course, like I said, between artificial and natural, the North star should be natural and between, okay.

Oh, so another big one is diversity versus conformity. And with diversity, you can also relate diversity to self assertion in conformity to the super system. And, yeah.

Uh, that’s an interesting one. I think about that a little more, but yeah, I’m just kinda rambling on here and I don’t know. I don’t think I did a very good job of actually. Saying something that’ll make progress, but I’m still working on this and there’s something I I’m finding something here and I apologize for just rambling on and having.

Nothing kind of prepared our outline and maybe this is all nonsensical, who knows, but I’m just kind of reflecting on what I’ve been thinking about this past week. And I know that there’s a solution and I know that we can get there. We just have to come together and we can’t be so divisive. We have to accept.

I mean, that’s an interesting word divide. Well, Those are interesting words, um, divisive and diversity, because I would think they come from the same root, but they’re very different in meaning. And we need diversity in most everything that I’ve studied in research, the more diversity that we have, the more progress in evolution that comes about.

Uh, you know, we can talk about the microbiome, which has been observed to be more what’s the word robust, but no, that’s a synonym, uh, more healthy and effective. If it’s more diverse, if you have a more diverse microbiome and ecology with animals, or is that animals, ecology, whatever, the more diversity of species that you have.

The more lively and the more growth and progress the, there is in the environment in that ecology. And so, you know, the more diversity we have with people, the more knowledge and understanding we can have in order to grow and progress and evolve. You know, if we have. More conformity and everybody’s the same, or thinking about the same things, then there’s, you know, how are we going to make progress if we just keep doing the same things over and over, or if everybody’s the same or, you know, we try to do, we try to get everybody on a similar mindset or similar background or similar experience.

Uh,

Pam: counterpoint though, with your microbiome, if you have the wrong bacteria, it kills all of your bacteria. With animals. If you have an invasive species that is killing the natural species, you lose your diversity.

CK: Yeah, but if you have more diversity, wouldn’t it be less likely to affect you as much?

Pam: sure. Unless you have a large majority of the invasive species.

CK: Right, but I can only get that way because you don’t have a balance or there’s no, you know, when you lose, you know, you start losing the diversity. So yeah. I mean, I kind of get what you’re getting at and obviously there’s. There may be instances where you have to kind of recognize what, you know, when there’s an invasive species or whatnot and take artificial measures to stamp that out. So, you know, again, we’d go back to the artificial versus natural vector.

So this is where we can balance and integrate artificial side. And so, yeah, I dunno, I’m just kind of coming up with this on the fly, but, but I don’t know, I’ll leave it at that. And I talked way too long and rambled about all that stuff that I didn’t really have. Constructed properly in my mind yet, but you know, that’s what this is about.

It’s about me reflecting and trying to get this organized. And this is what makes me grow. And this is what’s going to help me progress yes. With my philosophies. So hopefully I can get something out of this and no one else wants to comment or has any constructive criticism I’m open to that. And that’ll only help me.

So please feel free to give me a shout out or tell me I’m stupid. Don’t tell me I’m stupid.

Pam: I think that you’re an idealist and I’m a pessimist. Well, not always. I like to say that I’m an optimist who worries a lot. But I will always argue with you on your obsessive optimism.

CK: Well, I, I mean, maybe that’s, uh, the balance between us that’s that we’re integrating together with the forces of equal. So. Yeah, I went too long on that.

The Weekly ForceCast.

CK: So I want to get into our other segments. So let’s get into the weekly forecast where we have our pod SPO and our linchpin SPO. So this is kind of. We’re kind of wrapping this all into the weekly forecast and we’re going to have the pod SPO about podcasts.

We recommend and linchpins bone, which I refer to Pam as the linchpin and combine that with inspo, which I really wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but I assumed it meant inspiration. So

Pam: If you haven’t noticed CK likes to name things.

CK: I like words. I like language.

CK’s Podspo:

CK: So, yeah, so this week’s weekly forced cast and the pods bone for me, it goes out to the short wave by NPR. And this podcast comes out every day of the week, I believe. And it’s pretty short bite size, 10 to 15 minutes. Podcast and it’s hosted by Maddie’s to fire. And this past week, they had a really interesting episode, which is what enticed me to feature it on the.

Weekly force cast pods Bo this week. And the guest was just Wade, who is a professor, or she is in, I believe experimental physics at Imperial college in London. I hope I have this right, but she also writes in Wikipedia. And she’s, she’s been creating articles in Wikipedia every day for like the last three years for women and people of color in science. And so she’s been creating like an article a day for these people to balance out the disparity in science and the breakdown demographic breakdown, because obviously. As with everything else, you know, the structure around the world has prioritized, you know, white men basically in science and everything else.

So just the way it’s kind of trying to balance that out and create. These articles and all this knowledge around people of color and women in science. So I thought that was really fascinating and amazing. And I mean, she’s been doing it every day for the past three years. So she has like over a thousand different scientists that she’s put up on Wikipedia.

So I th I thought, you know, I’m sure that’s a really influential thing, impactful thing that she’s doing. So I find that really interesting. And I use the shortwave is one of the models that I use for our own podcasting and not bad advice. And they, you know, they’re short format and they’re really good quality audio, and they have good banter back and forth.

They feature different guests, uh, on a lot of different episodes and it’s a really good bite size science podcasts. They cover a lot of different things. So I highly recommend shortwave. From NPR.

Pam: Cool.

Pam’s Podspo:

CK: So Pam, do you have any podcasts that popped up to you this week?

Pam: So while we were talking, I was thinking about the most recent episode of reveal from the center for investigative

CK: uh, yeah.

Pam: Yeah. So the second half of their episode this week was actually a replay, but it’s still a totally relevant story. And it was about. How? Well, it was about a lot of things, but the part that popped up in my head today was how they, how white newspaper owners, basically white men owning the media, were able to insight lynchings and basically use the media to.

Craft the narrative that they wanted to tell and drive black people out of their homes and basically resulted in the mass loss of property and wealth that any black people in the area had developed, uh, post slavery. And, um, I thought it was really interesting juxtaposition with what we’re going through right now with the media

CK: Yeah. Bill is such a great podcast. It’s from the center for investigative reporting. Yes. So it’s investigative journalism and they. Go hard into their investigations. It’s really, really cool what they do. And they spend a lot of time and the podcasts are really, really quality. And I think they mentioned when they were soliciting for donations or fundraising that they spend like a hundred thousand dollars an episode or something like that.

Pam: Something like

CK: Do you remember that? Yeah. So they’re high quality episodes and that, yeah. Reveal is definitely one of my top favorite podcasts, so great recommendation there.

Linchpinspo:

So let’s move on to the linchpin SPO part of the weekly force cast. And this is where Pam will provide some inspiration from the planets or the stars or the cards.

Pam: All right, this one’s going to be a little bit longer than they will usually be. Cause there’s something really interesting happening right now. So on January eight, mercury moved into Aquarius. The mercury is the planet of information exchange and Aquarius is the sign of forward-thinking inventive ideas and humanitarian idealism.

And it’s also heavily related to technology, which we’ll get back to in a second. So mercury will be in Aquarius until March 15th, with a retrograde period from January 30th until February 20th. So on a personal level, this will have an impact on how you communicate the ideas you have and your overall mental processes from January 8th, until January 30th.

Up until that retrograde, you might find that you think of things in new ways. Maybe you change how you think about a social issue. Or that you’re changing the way you communicate

CK: So that already started in January.

Oh, I think that’s when all my crazy thinking started.

Pam: There you go. So enjoy it for now because when the retrograde hits on January 30th, instead of that forward thinking, um, feeling that you’ve been having, you’re going to be asked to review unresolved things that maybe you haven’t fully dealt with, or that have kind of been lingering.

And we’re going to get into that a little bit more once we’re actually in the retrograde period, but just know that it’s coming because everything is a cycle. So you’re going to be really forward-thinking for a few weeks and it will feel like you’re making tons of progress, but then the energy will shift into looking backwards.

And this is a good thing. So you can resolve issues and apply what you learn to the forward motion that you’ll feel again in late February. So if you know anything about your natal chart and you know, what house Aquarius is in, that’s the area of your life that will primarily be affected. So for me, it’s my sixth house, which is work health and kind of the day-to-day grind.

So I will have a change in communication or thought processes around work, or my day to day and CK for you. It’s your fourth house of home and family and specifically parents. So look out for ways that you think about your home family and parents changing over the next couple of months. Now, the, the really interesting thing though, is that on a national and global scale, this is going to be a really interesting period.

So on January 8th, the day that mercury the planet of communication entered Aquarius, the sign of technology and social ideals was the same day that Trump and many of the right wing extremists were D platform after years of no oversight. And then on January 20th, which is the day that Aquarius season starts.

It’s the day of Biden’s inauguration, which aligns with it being a humanitarian focus site. Aquarius is also a sign that can be temperamental and uncompromising, which means we could be in for more conflict and even violence.

CK: yeah. Thanks for reading. That’s a stop to think about the last part for a little while. It kind of scared me, but hopefully it’s for the better,

but yeah, that was all interesting. And what to think about.

Pam: I think the de platforming thing is really crazy, but after

years of

nothing, then on that

CK: Yeah, it’s crazy how the, this stuff correlates sometimes,

Pam: Figured that out. I was like, that was so cool.

CK: that is cool. And yeah, I love the self-reflective nature of this stuff, so yeah. Hopefully our listeners enjoy that.

Outtro.

And I guess that’s all for this week. We went a little longer than I wanted to. I rambled on a little more than I thought I would. And hopefully next week I’ll have a little more,

a little more. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I don’t know. Hopefully next week. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens next week. I don’t know what, um, Oh, I did want to mention that I. Ended up leaning into my creativity this past week and created some wall art for the studio. And I’m really happy with that.

And so maybe I’ll post some pictures on social media, so yeah, I mean, we’ll end it there and. So, yeah, we’ll find it there for now. Yeah. We’re going on? I don’t know. I’m just rambling. My mind’s really weird right now. I think the coffee is getting to me, but, so yeah. Thank you everyone for listening. And of course, thank you, Pam is always where can people find you?

Pam: So you can find me on Twitter, where I am at Pamela underscore Lund.

CK: Dan, you can find me on Twitter at CK disco, and I hope you guys are enjoying this newer format and I’m going to try to reel it in a little more, a little more of these next coming weeks. So yeah, I hope you all come back next week and keep on practicing to loo