I like this tangential riff into our "theater of the Absurd"
It is equally (similarly) absurd to me that:
1. We are sentient enough (some of us) to sense and anticipate (sortof)
that we are muddying our own water hole, shitting our own nest,
tragedizing our own commons to the point that we might not survive
the consequences, yet cannot seem to actually push the sisyphean
rock *up* the hill rather than just wander it around without any
sense of the gradient?
2. We imagine we could *ever* do anything more than just bash around in
pseudo-brownian motion?
I think we need to write a followon to Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" under
the title "Sisyphus Wandered"?
On 7/16/2025 8:22 AM, glen wrote:
"Know" is a strong word. But I think at least some of us perceive the
*absurd* - "Imagine Sisyphus happy". This sentiment is present in
every community I've ever interacted with, from academics to
politicians to plumbers. Sans suicide, what option do you have but to
keep pushing the rock up the hill?
This is something we "know" that could help a lot of people around us.
I have lefty friends who are caught up in the outrage about ICE and
Trump, righty friends caught up in Epstein Files and Woke, academic
friends caught up in the death of the university (of which Trump is a
symptom not a cause), etc. Many of the older ones simply forgot about
absurdity. The overwhelming majority of the young ones have never even
sensed it, much less perceived or lived it.
An important part of living absurdity, however, is pushing through
into a skill, repetition/retrying until you can get into the Flow of
some activity. You can't *feel* absurdity without Flow. So another
thing "we" know is whatever skill we have hammered out enough that
allows us to feel absurdity. So whether it's a knitting circle or wood
turning, find and mind-meld with the others doing that. And then reach
out in to the milieu and *hook* others into it ... and keep them there
long enough to broach the absurd.
On 7/16/25 6:56 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
What do "we" know that might be of help in remedying what I am
identifying as faults in our mode(s) of "collectivism". In the
spirit of part-whole conflation/emergence, *can* we, as sentient
beings (maybe with the technical leverage of LLMs, etc) take a more
conscious part in the collectives we are a part of? We already do it
by trying to design/engineer/clamp these systems to our presumed
intention, but it does seem that these "best laid plans often go
awry"? What insights does complex systems science offer us to
obtain another result?
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