Gumption

Dark Nights of the Soul

Maureen McHugh, a science fiction writer (who also enjoys "not science fiction" books), has written about the challenges of writing novels (and battling cancer) on her blog, No Feeling of Falling. She augmented her words - which unfold with exquisite openness and vulnerability - with a graphical depiction of the soul work involved in rising to meet these challenges, which is inevitably preceded by a descent of some kind. The image, appropriately entitled Dark Night of the Soul, is shown above; it first appeared in a post entitled Episode 1: Begin Anew, which offers a wonderful perspective from which to view new challenges.

Yogi sent me a link to this image, after a recent guest presentation I gave at a UW Tacoma course on Social Networks, taught by Ankur Teredesai [the presentation was on how proactive displays bridge gaps between online social networks and shared physical spaces]. Yogi had encountered the image in yet another course, on Interaction Design, an area which also offers a set of challenges, though the image and the ideas it represents were more related to our broader conversation after the class about work, soul, passion and happiness. I wanted to continue that rumination here, because it brought to mind (and heart) a few strands of inspiration I've encountered elsewhere.

David Whyte, in his book, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of Soul in Corporate America, invokes the epic poem of Beowulf - in which the hero descends into a deep well to battle a monster, Grendel, who has been attacking King Hrothgar's men, and then descends again to battle Grendel's mother - to illustrate some of his insights and experiences into creativity in the workplace. Whyte notes that:

[H]uman existence is half light and half dark, and our creative possibilities seem strangely linked to that part of us we keep in the dark.

and goes on to share the steps he sees in the story - and throughout work (and life) - that are required for unleashing our creativity:

• dropping beneath the surface
• disclosure and vulnerability
• disappearance and return

Whyte draws an analogy between Beowulf's battle with Grendel mother and each of our individual battles with the mother of all vulnerabilities: "the deep physical shame that we are not enough, will never be enough, and can never measure up".

He finishes the chapter with a quote from The Man Watching, by the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke:

Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Or, perhaps, one might say, by facing, repeatedly, darker and darker nights of the soul.

In an earlier post on an unfolding series of peak and pit experiences, I'd written about how inspired I was by Dan Oestreich's insights into and applications of Otto Scharmer's ideas about "Theory U". I want to repeat - again - what Dan had to say:

We all want to know where the point of transformation lies. I would say it is in “no space,” the place we come to after exhausting everything we know…and everything we are, a point of pure meditation. The current theory base, exemplified by Oscar Scharmer’s “Theory U”, suggests exactly this process of emptying ourselves of everything known so that we can listen to a best future Self, a source of deep intuitive wisdom... Scharmer describes the bottom of the U as where we touch a larger field that goes beyond our present awareness, a place of new insight and new consciousness that enables us to solve the problems we have been stuck by using our current, more limited awareness.

I also want to include a larger version of the image Scharmer uses to illustrate Theory U, as it closely relates to the image of the Dark Night of the Soul I started with at the beginning of this post:

I still have not read Theory U (yet), but revisiting this image reveals another dimension of connection (for me (and my work)), with respect to the inspiring ideas of co-sensing, co-presencing and co-creating - not to mention open mind, open heart and open will - so I've ordered a copy of the book.

Meanwhile, based on what Dan has written (and what I've experienced), I suspect the process of descending and rising from the depths of our selves and our work is an ongoing educational journey ... leading through a series of dark nights of the soul(s) ... and, hopefully, some bright days, as well.

Oh, I almost forgot to add that the image also reminds me of stories I've heard about "thesis hill", a visual representation that Roger Schank (my academic "grandfather") employs - or employed - in his meetings with graduate students. Thesis hill, as I understand it, was depicted using an inverse geometric representation - climbing a hill vs. descending into darkness - but in my experience, and in the experience of many people I know (including many of Roger's former students - my "uncles" and "aunts"), working on a Ph.D. thesis often requires persevering through many dark nights of the soul ... and Rilke's quote about repeated, decisive defeats by greater (or, at least, more powerful) beings is one of the best, short verbal characterizations of graduate school - and especially, a thesis defense - that I've encountered ... rivaling the visual characterization of the Dark Night of the Soul. And, I suppose, writing a science fiction novel has many characteristics in common with writing a Ph.D. [scientific] thesis, just with varying intentions - and interpretations - with respect to the relative use of fact and fiction.

[Update, 2008-04-01: I just stumbled upon this relevant quote - from one of my heroes, who certainly had keen insights into darkness and souls - on Aaditeshwar Seth's home page:

"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."

- George Orwell, 1946.]

Celebrating the Future Within ... Everyone?

Amy and I attended the Jubilee Women's Center's 10th Annual Benefit Breakfast on Wednesday, which had the inspiring title "Celebrating the Future Within" ... and a correspondingly inspiring program that included several women recounting their challenges, and now the Jubilee Women's Center helped them rise to meet those challenges. Our good friend, Mary, is on the Board of Directors for the organization, which is why we were there.

Jubilee is a transitional housing facility that offers homeless single women from ages 21 thru 60 a safe place in which to live and renew themselves. Women pay $250 / month for rent - the rest of which is subsidized through donations (such as those that are made during the annual breakfast) - and are offered a variety of training classes to help them become more self-reliant, both personally and professionally ... as Meeghan Black, of KING 5 TV, the MC for the event noted: these training classes sound like something everyone could use.

Deacon Steve Wodzanowski from St. Joseph Parish led the invocation, which was - synchronistically (for me) - based largely on a poem, The Journey, from Mary Oliver, a portion of which I'd referenced in my last post (on Blessed Unrest (which was based largely on Paul Hawken's book of the same name)), though he recited the full version, which I'm going to include here:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles. "Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.

This, in turn, reminded of some of my earlier ruminations on Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings, which brought into focus my conflicting views on self-reliance vs. interdependence, inherence, adherence and coherence - essentially, the self vs. society. There does seem to be a conflict, or at least tension, between teaching self-reliance (independence) and yet preparing women to re-enter society (which is, by definition, highly interdependent). One of Emerson's observations closely aligns with Mary Oliver's poem (and the overall theme of the event):

Trust thyself: every heart every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

Getting back to the event, it turns out that the average age of the women residents of Jubilee is 45. That fact, together with the unexpected events along their unanticipated path toward homelessness - for which I kept thinking "there, but for the grace of God the flying spaghetti monster, go I" (leaving aside, for the moment, the gender issue) - got me thinking about Dante, and his observation at the outset of The Divine Comedy:

In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in the dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.

Susan Fox, the Executive Director of the organization, noted the stigma often associated with women who are victims of domestic violence and/or homelessness, and stressed the importance of the positivism that pervades all aspects of Jubilee's programs. She encouraged us - and everyone - to look for (and celebrate?) the essential goodness within each of these women, a perspective I try to adhere to ... and, yet (as with so many things), often feel conflicted about.

I suspect that Susan would extend this suspension of negative judgment and appreciation of essential goodness to all women, not just those whose paths happen to lead to / through Jubilee. Returning to the gender thread I suspended earlier, this got me to thinking about whether we draw the line at women, or whether we ought to suspend negative judgments and appreciate the goodness in all people, men and women alike.

Pushing further along this edge, I wondered whether / how we can offer the same graciousness to the men who perpetrated violence on the women residents of Jubilee (not that I mean tot imply that all residents there are victims of domestic violence). Can we - ought we to - celebrate the future within every person (not just every woman)?

I find this to be an immensely challenging proposition. Philosophically, I cannot justify the drawing of lines of demarcation - this person is essentially good, that person is essentially evil. However, in practice, I do this all the time (I've noted several times before my personal challenges with seeing the essential goodness in George W. Bush, who, in my judgment, is one of the biggest perpetrators of violence - scaling back social programs, reducing protections for our environment, supporting capital punishment, war and [other forms of] torture - on the face of the planet). Who knows, maybe more obvious expressions of goodness lie in his future ...

As usual, I don't have any good answers ... just good questions ... or, at least, questions about goodness.

Blessed Unrest: Environmental and Social Justice for All … or Bust!

In his latest book (and video), environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author Paul Hawken achieves a remarkable balance between breadth and depth in arguing that in order to restore environmental and social balance on this earth, we must strive for both, or we will achieve neither. Noting that "we are nature", and thus however we treat the earth affects its people and however we treat one another affects the earth, Hawken presents a systems approach in which recognizing our interrelatedness, taking advantage of our interconnectedness, and acting with greater consciousness may allow us to save ourselves and our planet from the brink of disaster.

The title of the book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, is based on Hawken’s estimate of somewhere between one to two million organizations worldwide – many of them very small and narrowly focused (hence their relative unremarkability, from the point of view of major media) – that are acting to improve environmental and/or social conditions. Although many of these organizations (some of which are listed at WiserEarth.org) are acting independently, an increasing number are linking together with other organizations – in the non-profit, government and commercial sectors – to achieve greater progress ... think globally, act locally, link laterally.

The Unrest in the title presumably describes the motivations of people in this Movement – what moves them to take risks in challenging commercial rights on behalf of the rights of the planet and its peoples. I was deeply moved by the book – it is searingly provocative on an intellectual and emotional level. I’m not sure how much risk I’m willing to take on in order to join this movement … but I’ll at least write about it (Hawken notes that the key attributes to success in fighting for environmental and social justice are "gumption and persistence", so this is at least within scope for [the name of] this blog), and perhaps writing will help pave the way toward further action, by me and/or others (socio-neuro-linguistic programming?).

I found myself feeling physically ill during some passages, such as when he described a single day in the 15th century during which Spanish conquerors raped and beheaded 3,000 people in front of a [presumably complacent, if not condoning] priest. Other passages moved me to tears of sadness, as when he recounted the desecration of The Mother of the Forest, a 363-foot sequoia cut down and transported to New York to parade in front of audiences in the mid-nineteenth century, or the horrendous mistreatment of children by industrialists in England during the latter part of that century, such as the teenaged girls typically employed as benchgrinders who lost the ability to sleep, to stand, and eventually, to breathe, often dying before reaching adulthood.

Hawken highlights the history of economic fundamentalism – in which commercial rights have consistenly trumped human (and environmental) rights – perhaps most starkly exemplified by the Frame Breaking Act of 1812 in England, whereby people who destroyed machinery could be executed, while corporations running machinery that destroyed people were unaccountable. This primacy of business interests over environmental and social interests extends back through thousands of years of slavery and indentured servitude, and is still very much alive and well today, as exemplified by the “rights” of the World Trade Organization, which imposes sanctions on countries that seek to impose restrictions on commerce due to the environmental and/or human costs incurred in the production of "goods". In fact, I believe that it is the nearly unfettered ability of corporations to externalize such costs – to exclude them from any financial accounting, and thereby excuse themselves from any moral or civic accountability – that has led us to the brink of planetary and humanitarian catastrophe.

If everything and everyone is truly connected – an "Ecology 101" perspective that Hawken argues for repeatedly and convincingly throughout the book – then there are no externalities, and the sooner we (and I use the term with intentional ambiguity) adopt accounting and accountability systems with greater integrity, the better … and if we wait too long, we may give new, planetarily posthumous meaning to the cliché "he who dies with the most toys, wins".

Any kind of fundamentalism is dangerous, and, I believe, ultimately disastrous (I'm reminded of the slogan "all isms lead to schisms"). All fundamentalists are, consciously or unconsciously, promoting totalitarianism, and so all fundamentalist movements represent pathologies of power. The world would be a better place if everyone were a Muslim / Christian / capitalist / communist / etc., and so any means of shifting the balance in the “right” direction – through "expirtation, genocide and colonialism … cultural cleansing for the supposed benefit of the victim" – are justified. James Carse's observation that "all evil is the result of trying to eliminate evil" (e.g., "the only good Indian is a dead Indian") - and, for those more familiar with his insights into finite and infinite games, "evil is not the inclusion of finite games in an infinite game, but the restriction of all play to one or another finite game" - offers an interesting perspective on the fundamentalist perspective.

A quote from Bertrand Russell, from his aptly named Unpopular Essays, and reminiscent of sentiments expressed in and James Ogilvy’s Living Without a Goal, helps explain why fundamentalism is so popular:

Man is a credulous animal and must believe in something. In the absence of good grounds for belief, he will believe in bad ones.

Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, offers further insights into these fundamental human tendencies as they apply to the religious dimension. Hawken’s recounting of the attacks on Rachel Carlson, author of Silent Spring, a 1962 expose on the harmful effects of the chlorinated pesticides (DDT), highlight a relatively newer, secular dimension for bad grounds for belief, also known as corporate junk science, in which corporate funded "think tanks" sow seeds of fear, uncertainty and doubt about any scientific discoveries that may harm their economic bottom line. This tactic of assimilation through dissimulation is promoted implicitly and explicitly by corporations, governments and their partners and co-beneficiaries, the mainstream media, more recently exemplified by reactions – or lack thereof – to threats of climate change and Weapons of Mass Destruction Delusion  … though, as Hawken observes, “any finger-pointing is inevitably directed back to ourselves" (reminiscent of my own recent revelations regarding seeing what I want to see).

Hawken notes that fundamentalism is, fundamentally, about ideology, and any fundamentalism – whether it is capitalism, socialism, capitalism or terrorism – is based on uniformity rather than diversity, and thus more inclined to justify and dictate than to question and liberate. Diversity, along with self-organization and self-regulation, are among the hallmarks of an effective immune system (or what Fritjof Capra, in his book, The Web of Life, calls an immune network), and Hawken suggests that "the widely diverse network of organizations proliferating in the world today may be a better defense against injustice than F-16 fighter jets".

Although much of the focus in the book is on how small organizations are working to improve the lots of the planet and its peoples, Hawken also includes some larger scale initiatives, such as The Nature Conservancy, which has US$4.4B in assets, the Clinton Global Initiative, which recently raised US$7.3B in pledges to combat global warming, injustice, intolerance and poverty, and the Gates Foundation, with US$29B in assets (and an annual budget that is twice that of the World Health Organization), dedicated to the eradication of disease in the developing world.

While I hope these initiatives are successful, I have to note that I think it’s ironic that Bill Clinton, who, despite his purported commitment - in the past and present - to environmental and social causes, was an ardent proponent of some of the foremost tools of promulgating environmental and social injustice, through his support for NAFTA, GATT and welfare reform (and even his former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, who I had previously thought was more populist than corporatist, has recently been defending the gross inequity of the gross pay given to many CEOs).

Toward the end of the book, after cataloging a broad range of environmental and social injustices suffered in the past, present and possible future(s), interspersed with examples of organizations that are making some progress in addressing or even rectifying some of those injustices, Hawken offers an optimistic vision about how this movement might unfold. One passage, in particular, triggered a “goose bump moment” for me, where I experienced a strong visceral reaction to the words on the page:

We cannot save our planet unless humankind undergoes a widespread spiritual and religious awakening … What if there is already in place a large-scale spiritual awakening and we are simply not recognizing it?

As is often the case (with me), this positive feeling was soon followed by some self-critical reflection (perhaps because I was reading the book on an international flight during which, according to Atmosfair,  I was personally responsible for the emissions of approximately 3270 kg of C02 into the atmosphere): we I may be experiencing a spiritual awakening, but what are we am I doing about it?

This emotional and intellectual trajectory was then reinforced by another moving passage, in which Hawken quotes one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver:

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice.

So what am I going to do? How much gumption do I really have? Is the work I do really serving to promote environmental and social justice? Is it having impact on a scale that is commensurate with my abilities? [By definition, I suppose, it’s having impact on a scale that is commensurate with my willingness.] Can I really help to empower people to achieve greater environmental and social justice in my role(s) at Nokia? I’m not sure about the “blessed” dimension, but Hawken’s book has clearly created some unrest in me.

While I have written about environmental and social issues in the past, I believe I can do more to take part in this movement … and I am taking small steps in that direction. Although not directly related to the main focus of my research, I will be participating in a session at Pop!Tech 2007 in which I will be joined by Katrin Verclas and Nathan Eagle in giving presentations and leading discussions about broad visions and specific examples of how mobile technologies are serving to empower people throughout the developing world to develop solutions to the local environmental, social and political challenges they face. It’s a small step (for me, especially when compared to the steps taken by my cohorts in the session), but it does lie along a trajectory that seems to increasingly beckon me, including my recent awakening to the enormous challenges in Africa, and my recent exposure to the ways that communities and technologies can be used to address those challenges.

I can’t say that a clear path has emerged for how I can (or will) do more yet, but as long as I keep taking even small steps in the right direction, I believe I am contributing in positive ways to this movement.

On Hineini, Team Spirit and Recognition

I've been reading a soon-to-be-published book on Digital Dharma: A User's Guide to Expanding Consciousness in the Infosphere, by Steven Vedro, which proposes an integration of spirituality and technology based on the seven chakras. I hope to post an entry on the book after I finish it, but one of the many gems I've encountered in the book so far ties in with some other things I've encountered in other media streams over the past few days, and so I'm going to weave them together in a new stream here.

In a sidebar, Steven recounts Flash Rosenberg's recounting of the true value(s) of Hebrew School, which include a definition of hineini from Rabbi Krinsky that I find inspiring:

The most important duty you have is to be present whenever you are called upon, whenever you are needed, whenever you can help.

My son, Evan's, football coach, Joe Morgan, recently sent around a welcome message to the players and parents of his Woodinville Junior Football team (which has strong, multidimensional team and community spirit, as I've written about before). Joe's message included a signature that offers some related inspiration:

You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

This strikes me as a fabulous philosophy to articulate and promote, whether the team is oriented toward athletics, business, politics or any field of human endeavor! [Update: this quote is attributed to Zig Ziglar]

On Friday, I heard a story on NPR's All Things Considered about the retirement of Karch Kiraly that relates to all of this. In an interview with KQED's Rob Schmitz, Kiraly, the winningest volleyball player of all time, who may be the sport's pre-eminent bumper and setter (vs. the more attention-attracting servers and spikers), shared his strategy:

If I can help my teammate - or teammates - play at a level they never played at before, then it doesn't even matter so much how I play.

While many organizations talk a good game about valuing such under-the-radar contributions, very few have any kind of mechanisms to more formally recognize and reward this kind of behind-the-scenes facilitation of others' success - systems of encouragement for being a mensch.

I'll finish off with something I used to do regularly, but from which I've refrained for the past 6 months: invoke the wisdom of Kathy Sierra. In this case, I'll simply borrow a photo she posted in a blog entry on Never Underestimate the Power of Fun, in which she shared a fun example of recognizing employees who typically operate behind-the-scenes - a calendar that includes photos of employees of the Water Services Department of the city of Bryan, TX, along with the annual Drinking Water Quality Report they help produce:

The Twelve Steps for Technology-Centered Designers

A friend and I were recently discussing the prevalence of technocentric design and thinking in many of the world's leading technology research and development centers, both in industry and academia.  During the course of the conversation, in which we recounted people, places and projects that seemed to reflect an approach that might be characterized as "technology in search of a problem", it struck me that this obsession with technology for technology's sake seems almost like an addiction in some cases. And when I think of addiction, I think of the 12 steps ... and so I decided to have a go at adapting the 12 steps for technology-centered designers.

The Twelve Steps for Technology-Centered Designers

1. We admitted we were powerless over our users - that our expectations about the utility and usability of our technology had been unreasonable
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore our ability to design technology that is both useful and usable
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our work over to the care of our user-centered design processes as we understood user-centered design
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our technology-centered design and development processes
5. Admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our tecnhnocentric assumptions
6. Were entirely ready to have our Higher Power remove all these defects of perspective
7. Humbly asked our Higher Power to remove our technocentric biases
8. Made a list of all users our technology had harmed (or not helped), and became willing to make amends to them all
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were developing technology in search of a problem, promptly admitted it
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our users as we understood our users, praying only for knowledge of our users' needs for our technology, and the power for us to design technology to meet those needs
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs

A few caveats:

• I recognize that there are cases where "if you build it, they will come", and that some technology innovations are adapted for uses never envisioned by their designers (whether those designers were using a user-centered or technology-centered approach). The question, for me, is the starting point -- is the technology at least intended to solve a real human problem?
• The foregoing is not intended to insult or ridicule any person, place or project, but simply to encourage reflection ... and perhaps a bit of fun. The second of Don Miguel Ruiz' four agreements, "don't take anything personally", and the 12-step slogan, "take what you like and leave the rest", are applicable here.
• Although I feel a closer kinship to user-centered design than technology-centered design, I don't consider myself a particularly strong adherent to the former (I suppose I don't consider myself a particularly strong adherent to any philosophy, religion or political party). For that matter, I don't consider myself much of a designer, technologist or even "user" (which seems to have a rather passive connotation), either. [I'm not sure what this makes me, but I'll leave that for another blog post ...]
• I don't feel a particularly strong affinity to the 12 steps, either, especially not as they were originally articulated. For one thing, I do not believe that there is any kind of Higher Power that has a "will" for me (or anyone else). For another, I have a problem with the monotheistic anthropomorphic paternalism reflected in the original 12 steps. In an earlier post on self-disclosure, I noted that I consider myself a confirmed non-Catholic, and although I'm warming up to spirituality, I'm still pretty cool toward religion (I recently read in Utne about a related observation made by Paul Hawken: "All ideologies lead to 'isms' and all 'isms' lead to schisms"). Although AA, Al-Anon/Alateen and other 12 step programs purport to be "non-denominational", in my own experience, they are steeped in Christianity, and thus not nearly as open and inclusive as they say they want to be ... so I adapted the original 12 steps to remove these biases. FWIW, here's a version of the original 12 steps that I believe is more open and inclusive:
  
  
  1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our Higher Power as we understood our Higher Power
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
  5. Admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
  7. Humbly asked our Higher Power to remove our shortcomings
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
  10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power as we understood our Higher Power, praying only for knowledge of our Higher Power's will for us and the power to carry that out
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs

Spiritual Computing: Toward Meaningful, perhaps Transcendental, User Experiences

Craig Warren Smith visited Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto, on Thursday to present and discuss some ideas relating to Spiritual Computing. As Craig describes it:

Spiritual Computing (Spiricomp) elicits the potential of digital networks for fostering the spiritual growth among individuals and communities. ... The investigative method of Spiricomp is unusual. Made possible by HH Dalai Lama’s interaction with the late Francisco Varela, the method taps the “multi-model” approach combing “first person” methods used by spiritual and philosophic traditions with the established methods of neuroscience.

Craig wants to assemble a collaborative multi-corporate group to help push the agenda for spiricomp forward, and to this end has already met with individuals and groups within Intel, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo as well as other groups at Nokia.

Craig sees two primary ways for spirituality to contribute to more meaningful user experiences with and through technology: epistemologically, or the "ways of knowing" offered through spiritual traditions; and methodologically, through the practices and rituals of such traditions. He also illustrated and advocated ways that technology can help enhance spirituality: through online communities, spiritually-inspired games (including, perhaps, a subset of serious games) and a number of other dimensions (some of which I mentioned in an earlier post on Techno-spiritual Practices and New Technologies of Enlightenment).

Many of the themes that Craig discussed were inspired and inspiring, and he is pulling together ideas from a number of sources I want to investigate further, e.g., Francisco Varela and his notion of autopoiesis, the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, concepts from neuroeconomics, and several [other] dimensions relating to the art, science, business and politics of happiness. One of the most interesting statistics he quoted was that 83% of U.S. adults consider themselves "spiritual", while only half that number consider themselves "religious" ... and the numbers for the former group are increasing 1% annually while the numbers for the latter group are decreasing by 1% each year.

Among the topics that attracted the most discussion -- and debate -- was the collective seeking of a clearer definition of spirituality, a metaphysical concept that seems to have different meanings to different people and cultures. We eventually cycled back to a notion that Craig had mentioned earlier, that of Meaningful User eXperiences (MUX) ... though I [still] think of spirituality as something that is more transcendental, so perhaps Transcendental User eXperiences (TUX?) would be a better label (for me). The other contentious topic was whether there was a strong connection between customer empowerment and brand value (one of the value propositions Craig offered as to why technology companies, like Nokia, should be getting involved in spiritual computing).

Throughout much of the discussion, I was reminded of two influential books I've read recently, VIctor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" and Doug Rushkoff's "Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside out" (especially as Craig articulated the notion of a renaissance several times, a key focus area of Doug's book). As I mentioned in an earlier blog post on work, play and suffering that drew from both of these books, Doug notes that

Luckily, renaissances celebrate immaturity and idealism.

I think that this spiricomp initiative is both immature and idealistic ... and as a self-identified renaissance man, I look forward to future exploration of this convergence of spirituality and technology.

Warrior Monk: A Spiritual and Soulful Retreat

I attended a four-day retreat, Warrior Monk, before the holidays, with the goal of achieving greater clarity, courage and commitment in following my heart. The workshop "welcomes those in transition and those seeking their next level of authentic growth, healing and spiritual connection," and includes a combination of meditation, poetry reading and writing, chanting, singing and dancing, all designed to encourage mindfulness and intentionality.  There were daily opportunities for stretching: physically (a 5-step Tibetan rite sequence), mentally (paradox-embracing and reality-creation exercises, reminding me of the movie What the Bleep), emotionally (consistent focus on identifying, feeling and working with the four basic emotions: joy, anger, fear, sadness) and spiritually (incorporating elements of a variety of spiritual traditions).  As with the New Warrior Training Adventure, it was a wonderful opportunity to form strong bonds with great men, and I benefited as much (if not more) from the work other men did as from the work I did ... though as I write this, I realize I'm not as willing to make as much of a distinction between my work and their work -- or indeed, between me and them -- as I was before the retreat.