Rebel Wisdom Course: Sensemaking From The Edge
On September 11, 2021, I’ll participate as an instructor in an exciting course offered by the UK-based alternative media platform, Rebel Wisdom, called “Sensemaking From the Edge.” I consider the course exciting because it focuses on ways of seeing and living in our complex world that incorporates wisdom traditions and practices too often ignored or sidelined. In my portion of the course, I’ll center on the blues idiom as a wisdom tradition and on Albert Murray’s “Omni-American” concept as a pragmatic way to overcome the dead ends of racialist thinking. Cultural intelligence in its various forms will be a key to unlock the meanings and applications of the blues idiom and an Omni-American identity.
Thanks to Alexander Beiner and David Fuller, co-founders of Rebel Wisdom, for inviting me to participate. Their description of the course experience follows, with a link for further exploration and information below.
Why Rebel Wisdom Created This Experience
The world is a tapestry of interdependent systems. They can be as small as our own families, as large as a society or as encompassing as the biosphere. As our environment grows increasingly complex and our existential risks increase, making sense of how these systems evolve, adapt and change is becoming an essential human skill.
Often, when trying to make sense of this complexity we fall back on models and theories. And these are important, they can only take us so far: the map is not the territory. The territory is unpredictable. It's chaotic and dangerous. And if we want to adapt and thrive, we need to learn how to lean into the uncertainty and weirdness of the times. That means learning how to think flexibly and hold multiple perspectives at once. Cognitive flexbility is now an essential skill, because as Nora Bateson points out, systems are like organisms; evolving, learning and growing while we're trying to make sense of them. All the most pressing issues we face, and all our biggest cultural friction points contain this level of complexity.
In Sensemaking from the Edge, we'll be getting our hands dirty. Playing and inquiring as we expand our perspective to see more of the patterns hidden in the world around us. In the process, we're bringing together some of the most rebellious voices in the study of systems, culture and complexity with theories and practices that have never been combined.
What You'll Learn
Explore the practice of Warm Data, which helps us perceive how information changes across contexts. Learn how wisdom encoded in indigenous knowledge provides a radical new way of understanding complex systems. Drop into an Emergent Dialogue, which opens our eyes to unspoken patterns that arise when we make sense together. Listen to the wisdom of the Blues and gain a new lens on dynamics around identity, culture and race.
As well as these practices, you'll also gain a theoretical scaffolding to help you apply them to meaningful action in your life and projects. But it’s up to you to decide what that looks like.
You might be inspired by Tyson Yunkaporta to practice an Aboriginal memory technique shown to be more effective than the famous 'Memory Palace' method in a recent study. Or explore the concept of haptic cognition by storing information into an object you craft by hand. Perhaps you'll decide to apply Nora Bateson's Warm Data practice to a specific project and get to grips with the theory behind it. Or if that isn't your style, you could immerse yourself in music and the Black American intellectual tradition with Greg Thomas to see how aesthetics and history jam together to build culture.
Every week, we'll have a live session hosted by Pamela von Sabljar where the whole group will be able to practice emergent dialogue to make sense together. You’ll also have the opportunity to work in a smaller ‘pod’ or three other participants (in person or online) to compare notes, experiment with practices and support one another.
For more information on the schedule and structure of the experience and how to join us, check out the course webpage.