How this plays out… none of us know. But some of it ain’t looking good. That’s for sure.

Taking a slightly different but deeply related turn, I joined earlier in the year for an episode of AI and the Planet. The core focus of our chat was the ways in which Generative AI impacts the human nervous system.

Yes, you read that right.

This is an area of scholarship that deserves far more attention.

So, to Mat I say, thank you for the work you are doing. I hope more folks become aware of this. I hope this gets the funding and support it deserves.

But don’t listen to me. Listen to M3!

There are plenty more episodes of AI and the Planet to come. Here’s how you can register for the next one.

With φιλία (philía),

Nate

Who might we be in that moment? What might we say? Who will be there with us? What might we confess? What fears will we finally ‘shed’? What games will no longer be relevant? Will we have regrets? What might they be? How might we relate to them?

The last time I did this activity I had a quiet afternoon in the sun. I sat out on the rooftop, put my noise cancelling headphones on and engaged in a multi-stage process.

Today’s focus… my immediate family. My core unit; my life partner Esther, my daughter Asta and my dog Nala.

I began by imagining the passing of Nala. It was a beautiful yet tragically gut wrenching experience. I was there with Esther and Asta. We held space for what felt like infinite love, what felt like hours (but was probably more like 15 minutes or so). We spoke but the words themselves didn’t matter much. What mattered was our presence, care, gratitude and the love that was so clearly directed at Nala. Love that was so clearly reciprocated.

What remained, after the freakishly powerful experience of saying goodbye, was a huge fucking hole of sadness; love that no longer had a clear directional focus due to her passing. Grief is sometimes described as love that has nowhere to go.

I then imagined Esther’s death. I laid by her side. Holding her in the most beautiful embrace I could possibly imagine. I said everything. Everything. So did she. We shared space with others we loved, including Asta, who was now a mature adult; having grown so fully into her very own unique expression of life. We kissed. And we just stayed there. Eyes to eyes. Nose to nose. Lips to lips. Love to love. More gratitude than I could have ever imagined possible thanks to an entire life filled with so much love. So much fun. So much commitment. So much playfulness. So much everything. This may not hit home for you but there’s one person who knows exactly what I am saying and feeling. Then, finally, she too passed. The depth of emotion I was feeling in this moment felt like fucking dying*. I honestly can’t even describe how powerful this was. It. Felt. So. Real. So real.

*this is not about creating a hierarchy of care in any way. I love these three beings with the entirety of my heart. Each relational field expresses a unique quality of love.

Even writing this now, my entire body is deeply affected by this memory. I am writing this on a plane. Glasses on. Tears flowing. No tissues in sight. We are only just ascending. I’ll head to the bathroom soon.

This experience honestly felt so real. It was outrageous. Genuinely outrageous.

Okay, I then imagined Asta passing. Not as she is now and not even as the mature adult I referenced a moment ago. She was old. She had lived a full life. I just somehow managed to be there to experience the real end. This is the beauty of the imagination.

Interlude… I’ve just realised I am still listening to Jamiroquai. Somehow, as soon as I began writing, the music, the funky, soulful, upbeat tracks I was previously vibing to, no longer held the power they previously held. The musicality was supplanted with a different focus.

This process of saying goodbye to my daughter… what can I even say? As a parent you know. You know exactly what I’m feeling. Even the conscious thought triggers the body. Why would I deliberately, with the entirety of my imaginative faculty, engage with such a tragedy?

I’ll get to that later.

This process was beautiful. I got to experience the existential gratitude of hearing my daughter tell stories about her life. We laughed. We cried. We cuddled. I held her in a way that somehow felt resonant with her first moments of life. That incredible young being who had taken an arduous, 9 month journey to arrive. She actually entered the world with one arm by her side, raised as if she was flying like superwoman. This is something we often joke about. She truly is incredible. We got to experience the entire cycle. Birth, life, so much life, then death.

After some time, perhaps a good 25 minutes (the whole session took about two hours), she passed. She was gone.

That death feeling again. That pain that hurts so deep you cannot believe we have the capacity to hold it, to be with it.

It was as if the light of life itself had been eradicated. Not violently but inevitably.

Why am I doing this?

We will get there.

Finally, my turn.

I am lying down. I am looking out as if from my own eyes. I see the people I love. They are all there; Esther, Asta, Nala. All there with me.

It wasn’t clear how much time was passing through this experience until after. All I knew is that I was experiencing something profound (yes, that word existed before LLMs… do LLMs catch planes, cry next to the window and need to go to the bathroom to get tissues? No they do not. That’s how I know I am writing this. From the heart. On my phone without assistance. So if I get stuck I sit with the difficulty. I allow the discomfort. I learn through the process. My way of being is clarified through the cognitive process that is writing. I’ll say plenty more about all this in future posts. Oh, and I understand that many things extend our cognition. At least I think I do…? But LLMs are a very different type of phenomena than a pen. That’s for another post).

We talked. We laughed. We cried. I shared lessons learned. We reminisced. We allowed our memories to take us on a magic carpet kind of ride through our shared timeline. We got to see the whole thing, the gestalt if you will.

I then expressed. Everything fucking thing I felt. Every thing.

I was heaved over at this point actually. My body almost convulsing. I could feel the moment approaching. The goodbye. It was arriving.

As it arrived, I drifted off somewhat gracefully. I wasn’t grasping. I allowed.

Then I opened my eyes. Well, I tried to. There was more salty liquid floating around than you’d usually have to contend with.

The world flooded in. The sun shone from behind my back. I felt the warmth on my back. The wind blew, gracing my skin and hair with its wonderful presence. The city sounds did what they do. Mental. Beep, yell, chatter, screech, big ass plane overhead. The birds flew above. The clouds passed. The world kept on turning. Same-same but different.

I had changed. I am always changing. Always. But in doing this, in enacting this process as an act of self care, I had changed in ways that I could only subtly feel but not yet fully acknowledge.

This brings me back to why I, or you, might do such a thing.

As Kierkegaard suggested, we can only really understand life by looking back. This looking back from deaths door is often described as a transcendental type experience. People soften. They forgive. They confess. As David Whyte suggests, the person who dies is not me. Not you. But some other person. Some person I always had the potential to be. Some less encumbered person. A lighter person. A clearer person. A more courageous person.

So, I ask, why wait for your final day? What if, through our incredible ability to inhabit past, present and possible all at once, we can begin becoming who we always had the potential to be? What if this activity, perhaps done at semi-frequent intervals, was capable of offering us something unique; something we could carry with us through the days of our life?

It’s my hypothesis that this can. This is why I do it. And this I why I encourage you to do the same.

With φιλία (philía),

Nate

In truth, I don’t think we’ve had all that much democracy to date. But untangling the yarn of that statement would require a lot more than what I’m afforded at this minute. I also generally think that AI will act as a force-multiplier of existing systemic dysfunction (perhaps also creating a bunch of new dysfunctions. There will almost certainly be some goodies in here though). This is not to say statistical approximation is inherently bad. Nor is is to say it’s neutral. All tech is imbued with values and these AI systems are the most axiological technologies we’ve ever produced! It’s just to say that the current paradigm—framed through the lens of the metacrisis for simplicity—ain’t the best possible environment for the cultivation of wise sociotechnical system development and use. And it’s not exactly an environment right now where one justifiably feels we are becoming more respecting of diversity in ways that lead to greater collective coherence (if you think those things are diametrically opposed then we should definitely talk!).

I’m sharing the talk here now because I’m back on Substack and I figured some of you may find it of interest.

If you’ve got comments, fire away! Oh, and I’m running an AI and the Planet event tonight on the ‘AI Arms Race’. Fun :)

With φιλία (philía),

Nate

Something I am living at the moment is a shared process with my partner. A process that operates and is experienced at many levels. The first is the level of our unmaking, reorienting and becoming. The process of learning about past, situating present, cultivating new capacities and evolving patterns in service of new possibilities. The developmental process of human-ing in relation, if you will.

But this is not just lived as ‘experienced directly’. It’s not just something we practice for the benefit of ourselves and our family. It is something we are actively shaping to support others in practicing (bridging Esther’s somatic therapy work with my philosophical counselling). We will share plenty more about this over the comings months. There’s no rush. But it is coming.

What I may do between now and then is test different frames for how I describe aspects of this process. Some more technical. Some more poetic. Some that don’t quite fit either, whatever either means.

Here is something I recently wrote on my phone (actually whilst cycling on the stationary bike). I wrote it quickly. But it feels resonant. It’s an expression of an evolving understanding. Something I am, as I* clarified a moment ago, articulating in various ways.

*weirdly my autocorrect tried to change I to AI.. Next-token prediction has a self-serving Telos here people!!!

Anyways. Here it is. A very brief exposé… an exploration of the complexity of the whole human organism, its needs, the way we are impacted by the world (the way the organism learns / adapts to try protect against wounds, meet certain unmet needs etc.) and the ways in which we can, over time, and with patient, loving effort, evolve the entirety of who and how we are.

…

The human organism, like all other organisms, is always attempting—through diverse processes of embodied, embedded, enacted and extended cognition (plus plenty of other related processes)—to meet its needs (the fundamental needs of attaining calories, maintaining the correct body temperate, consuming water etc. are obviously part of this). Yet the human organism is, perhaps, in important ways, different than many other organisms. They have wildly complex minds, are deeply, deeply social, work with the weird wonders of abstraction purposefully, and, regardless of how hard they try, cannot escape their existential orientation. So, just as much as food and warmth and shelter, they need to be seen. They need to be heard. They need to be valued by important others. They need to belong in this world. They need to feel safe. They are a process of becoming, grounded in and essentially fuelled by love.

**one of the ways we think about this is through the NeuroAffective Relational Model’s (NARM) five core adaptive survival strategies, each rooted in basic developmental needs.. We also think through the lens of Character Adaptation Systems Theory (CAST)from Henriques. Basically the goal here is to see the organism as a whole; biological, psychological, social, existential etc. we have not found the one right way, instead working with different theoretical contributions as we explore how to situate our lived experience and evolving work with clients).

However, the world—which includes those nearest and dearest—often fails to meet many of these needs (rarely deliberately of course).

When a human being is young they are entirely dependent on those around them. As they develop in their early years they remain dependent, but less and differently so.

In various ways, through lack of attunement or incapacity or plenty of both, those the child most relies on ‘fail’. This is not a value judgement but a statement of fact relative to the human organisms’ needs.

They may be left alone. They may be ignored. They may be shunned or shamed. They may be overburdened.

This process of unmet needs—along with the way this and related processes or events wound us—need not be extreme. Although, of course it very unfortunately can be, taking the form of significant wounds of various kinds.

The human organism, the being in the ongoing process of becoming, responds, attempting to navigate the world and have its various needs met. Through this process, so often taking on various failures as their own.

I am not worthy. I not enough. I do not belong. Something is wrong with me. More generally, and something of a gestalt of the four point before, I am not safe.

This isn’t narrative per se. At least not in the very early years. But these are the subconscious ‘beliefs’, deeply held, entirely embodied (i.e. contributing to, and being reinforced by, neurophysiological patterns) that eventually become narrative. That eventually become the ground of identity itself. That become the lens through which this particular being interprets and thus experiences the world.

When this happens, entirely outside of self-consciousness in the early years, the organism adapts (learns and changes). This adaptation is an attempt to meet the needs of a relational being; to be cared for, to belong, to feel truly safe.

But this attempt to meet needs can often become maladaptive (meaning, the organisms’ attempt to protect itself, to find a way to belong etc. makes life significantly harder than it might have to be).

A negative sense of self.

A heightened sense of danger.

A shame based identity.

Self sabotage.

Bodily symptoms.

Etc.

All narrowing the field of possibility. All limiting, to some degree, full engagement with life’s complexity.

Let’s explore one of these dynamics.

Bodily symptoms (those of a psychophysiological, not structural nature) arise at some level when the brain anticipates danger (the ‘mechanism’ of the false danger signal is the brain interpreting something that is safe—such as sensations from the knee—as dangerous. It is, in effect, an anticipation of danger, a false interpretation). This happens because it has internalised a model of the world that is ‘fear based’ (the result of needs not being met and of wounds being inflicted, the most fundamental of which is the need to feel relational, emotional and physical safety). These anticipations of danger produce the bodily phenomena (they are not ‘just in the head’. The sensations, whether pain or headaches or fatigue, or any other form they take, are very real. They just result from psychophysiological processes / pathways*** rather than structural damage. None of this is to say this is the only way ‘bodily symptoms’ arise. Obviously. This is just a massively misunderstood and mistreated way that bodily symptoms do arise).

***this paper is a rather beautiful demonstration of this process, along with the way ‘Pain Reprocessing Therapy’ is used to help people with psychophysiological pain (back pain in this case) overcome the symptoms (and yes, this can even the case when people have structural abnormalities that are clearly observable through imaging techniques. These are often referred to as ‘normal abnormalities’). I learned about this, originally through my own experience, by working with a Mindbody Medicine Group at Harvard Medical School. Since then I’ve been fortunate to keep learning about this through the literature, engaging with clinicians, and living the process myself.

And that’s just the very brief explanation of the neurophysiological mechanism (often described through the scientific lens of predictive processing, housed within a more complex**** psychophysiological process.

****I say more complex partly because mind may well not be reducible to brain / body process. In formal parlance, brain might not be the necessary and sufficient condition for mind. But there’s a lot more to this claim of relative complexity. That’s for another time.

But there’s more to it than this (and here’s where I move away a little from what is becoming well established, empirically grounded scientific insight, towards what you can absolutely consider a more speculative view*****. This is not to say it’s woo in any way. Just that it takes a broader view of the organisms adaptive capacity). The system isn’t just making a mistake. This is more than just ‘prediction error’. This is more than just not feeling safe (having learned danger) and getting the particular type of danger ‘wrong’ (i.e. not being relationally safe, yet giving the signal of a bodily problem that doesn’t structurally exist).

*****This speculation has some grounding, however. I don’t really think it’s as much of a leap as some folks might think. If, of course, you treat the mindbody system as being an entirely dualistic system, and you treat the body like a machine, then it’ll feel like a huge leap. But, if you shift the philosophical underpinning a wee bit it’s not a stretch at all. The mindbody system is ‘one system’ in an important sense. It’s not meaningfully separable. Bodily process impacts mind. Mind / psychological process impacts body. This is complex causality, but causality nonetheless. I’ll give one example to highlight this point; psychogenic aphonia. This is the name given to the process of a person losing their voice due to emotional distress, something that clinicians describe as often occurring after the loss of a loved one. Might this be some kind of invitation to go within, to actually be with the depth of the emotion you are being called to process? Maybe. My experience leads me to believe this could in fact be the case. Oh, and Aphonia can also occur from straining your voice. That is the more common clinical presentation.

The system is trying to meet needs.

If something is wrong with my body, I might be cared for. I will be given attention and support. Attention and support I desperately need.

So this process—parts of which are observable neurophysiologically—so often described as ‘the brain learned danger and is now over-anticipating danger which results in very real bodily sensations that do not have an underlying structural cause’ is simply the pathway through which the organism, bound by certain constraints and driven by various fundamental motivations / needs, moves the entire being towards the care that is needed. The care that wasn’t previously received.

Seeing this adaptive process, not simply as a mistake (a highly mechanistic view. Not wrong, but incomplete in my opinion) but rather as an attempt to fulfil unmet needs, is game changing.

It does not mean the false danger signals aren’t happening. They are. It does not mean the person experiencing this doesn’t have to ‘unlearn’ the false sense of danger. They do. The person needs to learn to feel safe. They need to learn to regulate. They need to learn to once again go towards difficulty with courage. And through this phased exposure, they can teach their nervous system that they are in fact safe. But instead of the person, yet again, seeing themselves as ‘having something wrong with them’, it situates this complex phenomena in a more coherent and holistic frame. An evolutionary frame. A frame that speaks to the nature and function of a complex, minded, existentially oriented social organism; the human being.

This is one of the many means by which the organism seeks to meet its needs; it sends signals we cannot ignore. Signals that require us, in some way shape or form, to seek change (even if that change comes from the process of really not trying much at all. Here I allude to the ‘paradox of change’ as it sometimes known. When we pressure ourselves to get better, that reinforces the same process of danger signalling. To ‘get better’, that is, to teach the complex system that is us a deeper sense of safety, so that said danger signals can soften and then eventually be replaced by other new ‘pathways of safety’, we need to allow ourselves to be as we are. We need to accept what is happening. And we often need to healthily metabolise the wounds and unmet needs of the past, building capacity in the process that can help carry us forward with less fear etc.).

As a result, this, like to many other adaptive processes that become maladaptive in a way—they make life more, not less difficult—becomes an invitation. Something not to run away from but to move courageously towards.

When seen this way, a person can immediately become more generous towards themself. This provides a far more interesting and useful foundation from which to reorient… I no longer need the false danger signals. They served me in a way. They were an attempt to encourage me to seek care. To learn, for the first time, how to feel safe in relation. I have the patience, compassion and power to move beyond them. I have the power to healthily meet my fundamental needs in relationship. This may take time. There will be setbacks. But the complex system that is me can learn anew, can evolve based on having these fundamental needs healthily met. I no longer need to hide from the world. I can be in this world because I belong in this world.

That is (psychophysiological symptoms or ‘neuroplastic pain’ as it now commonly known), of course, just one example. One particular direction that an organism can take in an attempt to meet needs that have been systemically unmet earlier in life. There are many strategies. Many experiences. But they share a core; the learned sense that one is unworthy of love. That one is not enough just as they are. That fundamentally, the problem is with them.

If we could start seeing the experiences we have, the ways we act, and the impact this has on the world through this more ‘whole-of-organism, process-relational’ view, we could really help people in ways that they often aren’t helped. We could really help society in ways that it it so desperately needs.

That’s what Esther and I are working on, patiently, in the background (at the intersection of somatic therapy and philosophical counselling). We work with the entire being that is you, grounded in the broader context of your full existence. We attempt to thoughtfully de-pathologise what can be thoughtfully de-pathologised (for example, if you are experiencing the bodily sensations referred to as anxiety, we don’t jump to say hey! You HAVE anxiety, assigning a label to you as if a dynamic process is something you own and need to identify with. We try to understand why the self organising, self making system that is you is sending a particular form of anticipatory danger signal. We work to understand not just what you are experiencing now but why this may have arisen in the first place, noting that this is not always a verbal process. From that place of engaging with past and the way it has shaped you, we begin, through various means, to support you in teaching your nervous system that you are in fact safe. As this process unfolds, you become less conditioned. You become freer in a sense; you have more agency to act in this world. It becomes clearer not just how the world shapes you but how you can shape yourself in the continual process of your becoming. We do so not through static rules or rigid procedure but through dynamical shared process.

This shared process is grounded in an evolving theoretical understanding of the complexity of the human organism. It is tested, each and every day. It is refined constantly. This theory is met not just with the practice of being with clients but through the depth and challenges of our own lived experience. This is a process that, once started, does not simply stop. It becomes part of your ways of being. At least it has for us.

We do not have all the answers. No one does. But we are here to help. To create space. To offer new opportunities. To help you evolve in the ways that only you are capable of lf leading, acknowledging this really does have to occur in relation.

This, in our opinion, is what healing so often looks like. And it’s a process that arguably we all must go through if we are to make our individual and collective existence truly better than it is today.

With φιλία (philía),

Nate

Disclaimer: This is not intended as medical advice, nor is it intended to suggest that biomedical interventions are unhelpful or unneeded or anything of the sort. Modern medical science and medical practice works wonders in so many different contexts. This is an attempt to express something complimentary to our existing paradigm of biomedical science, an approach to ‘healing’ that works with the biospychosocial complexity of the always learning, always adapting (almost always entirely unconsciously by the way) human organism and our ‘survival physiology’ (along with the various ways this survival physiology and survival psychology effects us throughout life).

For something of further interest, I suggest reading ‘Bioethics as bios ethikos’ by my colleague, Prof. Luis de Miranda. Here is the abstract: “Drawing on a genealogical analysis of the distinction between zoē (biological life as organic functioning) and bios (a distinctively human way of life shaped by meaning, orientation, and evaluative practice), the article reconceives bioethics as bios ethikos: ethical reflection on the conditions under which forms of life become meaningful and inhabitable. It introduces the notion of the existential remainder to describe the ethically significant dimensions that persist when institutional deliberation leaves aspects of lived existence under-articulated. The article proposes a renewed structural orientation grounded in the heuristic formula T = PEWS + C. Ethical thinking (T) is distributed across four interrelated domains of lived existence: Person, Earth, Work, and Society (PEWS), while the addition of C designates the creative openness that resists full institutional codification. PEWS-oriented evaluation may be operationalised through more integrative assessment tools, while maintaining vigilance toward the irreducible horizon of existential creativity. Bioethics, thus reconceived, becomes not only the regulation of life, but reflection on whether the governance of life sustains the conditions under which life can remain meaningfully lived.”

On the other hand, we as indviduals, as members of a society, certainly have a social responsibility. We exist within a complex, interconnected web of life. There is no ‘I’ without ‘we’. This has long been known and practiced by many cultures, and is now explicitly understood in various scientific disciplines. We cannot live in such a complex lifeworld, relatively coherently, if we do not accept and act on the various social responsibilities we have towards one another and towards the greater-than-human world.

Given this, a valid question becomes, who does the art come from? Is it the ‘role’ of the artist afforded a certain freedom of expression? Is it the whole individual, afforded various rights, but also bound up in a web of responsibilities? Perhaps we do not have to answer in the binary. Perhaps both present important truths that we can acknowledge and consider in our lives as we create, consume and are moved by art.

aftrthought. attempts to play with this non-binary positioning, allowing us to inhabit the role of artists, whilst also bringing the entirety of our complex selves into our end-to-end artistic process. We do this at the intersection of nature photography, eco philosophy and the dynamic power of human form. Through this we tell stories about past, present and possible futures. Each project goes toward difficult truths, not simply to reveal a truth that we perhaps often shy away from, but to create an opportunity for honest and courageous self-reflection. In this way, we are benefitting from the freedom so often afforded to artists, a freedom that allows us to express things that aren’t commonly expressed in ‘polite’ everyday conversation. At the same time, we are engaged in this process in full acknowledgement of our social responsibility, to each other, to future generations, and to the greater-than-human world to which we all belong.

This, in our opinion, is how artists can use their artistry and the unique privileges afforded through their artistry to play positive and important social roles. This, as we argue so often, is more important than ever before.

For more, head to https://www.aftrthought.art/

The 8 principles

Here are the 8 principles, along with the types of questions you might like to ask in relation to each of the principles. By asking questions like this, by reflecting on these principles, you are encouraged to gather evidence, engage with diverse stakeholders, and make decisions that best align to each of the principles. Of course, if you’re leading a major project, you might be expected to do this rigorously, document the whole process, and ensure that this process informs what you build and how. If you’re using these principles for a more everyday decision, the process can be a lot simpler. More on that below!

*All the questions are open ended and non-exhaustive. They are designed to help you begin reflecting and deliberating so that you can make decisions about how to design and use AI systems in ways that are positively aligned to each of the principles.

1. Human, societal and environmental wellbeing
AI systems should benefit individuals, society and the environment.

• If we build this system, what are all the potential impacts to people, society, and/or the environment, not just immediately, but in the long-term? And not just directly, but indirectly and systemically?

• Are the positive impacts likely to far outweigh the negative impacts? How can we demonstrate or justify this? If not, are there actions we can take to shift the balance back to positive? If not, what do we need to do to report on our findings and move forward?

2. Human-centred values
AI systems should respect human rights, diversity, and the autonomy of individuals.

• Which human values are most important for us to consider in the process? How can we design the system to ensure these are respected?

• Could the system impact people’s fundamental human rights? How?

• How can we include diverse perspectives in the design of this system?

• Could the initiative impact people’s ability to make free and informed decisions about how they live their life? How can we ensure their autonomy is respected?

3. Fairness
AI systems should be inclusive and accessible, and should not involve or result in unfair discrimination against individuals, communities or groups.

• What does fairness mean in the context of this system?

• Is there a chance the system might unjustly burden or overly benefit people? How might this happen and what can we do about it?

• How can we ensure the system is accessible for diverse peoples?

• What steps will we take to ensure the system is inclusive?

4. Privacy protection and security
AI systems should respect and uphold privacy rights and data protection, and ensure the security of data.

• Will the system impact people’s privacy rights? If yes, how? What can we do about this?

• How can we design the system to ensure data is protected throughout the entire lifecycle?

• How can we ensure the system is as secure as possible for all using or impacted by it?

5. Reliability and safety
AI systems should reliably operate in accordance with their intended purpose.

• Can we clearly describe the purpose of the system?

• What technical measures do we need to design for and monitor to determine if the system is performing safely, in alignment with its stated purpose?

• If something goes wrong, can we pause or stop the system completely?

6. Transparency and explainability
There should be transparency and responsible disclosure so people understand when they are impacted by, or engaging with an AI system.

• Will the people impacted by the system know AI is involved?

• Can people choose to opt out?

• Will we be able to explain how the system operates end-to-end? If we can’t, how can we reliably describe the limits of the systems’ explainability?

7. Contestability
There should be a timely process to allow people to challenge the use or outcomes of an AI system.

• How will we ensure people impacted by the system understand their rights?

• How will we ensure people have a way to raise concerns or request information about outputs and outcomes?

• Have we clearly defined processes to support people in doing this? Have we designed these processes to ensure the experience doing this is simple and effective?

8. Accountability
People responsible for the AI system should be identifiable and accountable for the outcomes. Human oversight of AI systems should be enabled.

• Who is responsible for the system throughout the project and once in production?

• Is that person or other persons held accountable for how the system operates?

• Will we ensure adequate training for staff using the system?

• Do we have auditing and oversight of how the system operates end-to-end?

• What processes will we follow—and who is responsible for this process—if the system operates outside of its intended purposes?

As you can see, each of the principles and any guidance relating to them acts as an important reminder. They tell us what we need to remember when we are reflecting, deliberating, and making decisions about if, when and how to develop and / or use AI.

Let me offer a brief repeatable example, not of an entire ethics process but of how to use the principles simply in everyday work.

Ethics on a napkin

Imagine you’ve been asked to assess the use of AI in the context of one of your workflows. You’ve got a meeting coming up in 30 minutes to discuss this. You’re not expected to have any kind of final answer, but you are expected to share your thoughts on how well fitted AI is to support a given workflow.

It’s likely you start by ensuring you understand the problem, understand the proposed solution, and have a good sense of how well the solution fits the problem.

Let’s say, in this case, you’re pretty confident that a particular AI system will significantly enhance the workflow in question. It’s likely to be effective. But you’ve got fifteen minutes left.

To the right, a napkin from the lunch you recently ate. You sketch out 8 horizontal lines, one for each of the principles. On the far left you add the number 1. On the far right the number 7. You now have a Likert scale where 1 represents the worst alignment and 7 represents the best alignment.

You decide to use the Likert scale as a way of assessing how aligned this proposed solution to improve a particular workflow is to each of the 8 AI ethics principles you recently learned about.

You go through the process, plotting how aligned the proposal is to each of the principles.

Principle 1: 5
Principle 2: 4
Principle 3: 4 and so on
Under each number you add a few dot points of justification. You’re explaining your reasoning.

Ethics on a napkin: image of a napkin with hand drawn Likert scale for each of the eight ethics principles showing the numbers listed above in the article.

*Bonus, you could also represent this as a spider plot, which is sometimes an even easier way to see the relationship between each of the principles.

You check the time and there it is. You jump on Teams and start the meeting.

Ten minutes in you talk about the work you’ve just done. You share a little about the process and explain your reasoning. The team’s really interested in what you’ve shared and wants to know more about the process.

You’ve just kicked off AI ethics, with only a napkin available.

AI ethics isn’t necessarily an easy process. It can take time. It can require us to gather a lot of evidence, engage with a lot of different people with important skills and experience. And sometimes it’ll require us to not to something we thought we were going to be able to do. But, more often than not, it’ll help refine the way you are approaching AI, increasing the likelihood that AI is developed and used in ways that are safe, secure, and responsible.

By keeping these principles in mind, and reflecting on them when relevant, you are well placed to make informed, values aligned decisions about how best to ensure that AI supports your work and helps positively serve the public.

A little more about ethics

Ethics can be thought of as the process of justifying the best reasons for action. It requires us to step back, take stock, and deeply consider not just what is possible, but what is preferable. Of all the ways we might choose to act, which is best, and why?

AI ethics is the process of doing this in relation to development and use of AI systems; considering the goals they serve, the values they seek to promote or protect, the ways they’re built, the dynamics of the material supply chain that makes them possible, and plenty more.

Although a simplification, practical, real-world ethics often features the following stages:

1. Imagine and Reflect: This is a process of stepping back and considering what type of world we are currently in (where are we now and where have we come from?), along with what type of world we’d most like to create (where would we like to be?). Part of this is also about questioning and clarifying the values that matter most and how they relate to the type of world we’ve imagined might be possible, should we choose to act in certain ways.

2. Deliberate: This is a process of exploring options, gathering information, weighing evidence, and considering not just what can be done, but what should be done. In other words, how can we act in closest alignment to our values in this context we find ourselves in?

3. Decide: This is where our imagination, reflection and deliberation come together to inform a direction, something we can commit to going forward. A decision or decisions with real-world actions and clear justifications / reasoning.

4. Act: This is where we act in alignment with the decisions we have made, doing so with as much integrity as we can muster.

5. Monitor: This is a process of ongoing observation where we assess how our decisions have affected the world. Did it turn out as we expected? Did something surprising happen? Did we miss something important? It’s useful to recognise here that this isn’t just about effects we can quantity but also relates to the care we may have shown or the type of person we were through the process.

6. Learn and Improve: This is a process of reflecting on both what we have been doing and what has happened. It’s a commitment to learning and improving our process so that we can do just as well, if not better, the next time around. Think of this as continuous ethics improvement.

Ethics is a very human process. And, if you’ve read this far, you’re probably already realising that you do something like this quite often. You do it at work. You do it at home. Yet when it comes to AI, learning a little about this process can likely help you use the 8 AI ethics principles to reflect, deliberate, and make even better decisions.

Thank you for reading.

After we recorded this session, Luis shared the following on LinkedIn:

I recently had the privilege of a conversation with Nathan (Nate) Kinch, recorded for The RSA (The royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce). The online event was titled What It Means to Be Human in an AI World (and if you click on it you will hear us). We were reminded that the real question is not what AI is becoming. It is what we are forgetting to become.

We have built extraordinarily powerful analytic tools, systems that decompose reality into known parts, rearrange the data of our past, and simulate the gestures of thought. But there are three modes of intelligence, as I have argued in a paper published by Human Affairs. Analytic intelligence divides. Dialectical intelligence negotiates. Crealectic intelligence participates in the generative unfolding of reality, in the compossible relationship between what is and what is admired. AI operates in the first register, occasionally mimicking the second. The third remains, for now, irreducibly human.

This matters because how we think changes who we are. Prolonged daily engagement with analytic systems risks narrowing our cognitive repertoire. Crealectic intelligence, the capacity to sense the possible, to dwell in admiration, to orient oneself toward what does not yet exist, must be deliberately cultivated. It is a civilizational necessity, I argue in this interview.

One claim I made that surprised some listeners: AI is more anthropocentric than humanity itself. The reason is simple. AI is trained on our past. Its horizon is backward-facing. Human beings, by contrast, and as the Existentialists insisted, are defined by projection, by aspiration toward what we are not yet. More than that: we aspire to be closer to the divine, to the submlime. The Ancient Greeks called this theosis. It is the movement, present across traditions from Plato to the Upanishads, toward an ennobled form of being. This is the cognitive structure of civilization in the making. And it is precisely what analytic minds cannot perform.

Philosophical health, as I work with it in practice, is the coherence between our explicit worldview or personal cosmology and our lived conduct. But it is also deeper than that: it is the reawakening of the microcosm-macrocosm relation, the felt sense that our existence participates in a larger order. In dialogue, in structured sense-making, this capacity reactivates with surprising ease. My philosophical counseling sessions with young and older people have convinced me that our cosmological muscle is not atrophied; it is merely dormant.

What AI ultimately exposes is a purpose vacuum, as Stuart Russell concluded in his Human Compatible. We have not been good at defining shared long-term orientation. AI is a heuristic provocation that forces the question we have postponed: what is the shared purpose of a planetary civilization?

We are not yet a planetary civilization. We are a technologically entangled species with fragmented cosmologies. The answer is what Leibniz called compossibility, the art of expanding good possibilities while ensuring they elevate one another to form a world and a home. I call the orientation toward this eudynamia: a good and dynamic relationship with the possible and the compossible.

The Stoics and Seneca observed that if one does not know to which harbor one sails, no wind is favorable. AI scales analytic power globally. What must scale alongside it is the capacity for shared purpose, coherence, and the loving efflorescence of the sublime.

Here is the recording.

All AI and the Planet episodes have been qualitatively distinct. Different guests, different topics, emergent discourse. This was, at least to date, the session that seemed to most stop participants in their tracks. Instead of the chat blowing up with comments and debate (as it so often does), it felt like people really sat in a state of deep listening.

I deeply value the relationship I have established with Luis. I have learned so much from him and want to express gratitude for his generosity, persistence and rigour.

I hope this episode speaks to you deeply.

With φιλία (philía),
Nate

We covered unique territory, culminating in a few tears from yours truly.

This, as always, is an invitation to live big questions and explore challenging contexts.

I hope you enjoy.

With φιλία (philía),

Nate

Asta, it’s Dad. I’m writing this to you from 38,000 feet. I’ve just left you to head back to where I am currently living. All this back and forth is draining. But I’ll keep doing it for as long as we are apart.

Soon enough, Esther and I will move up. We’re getting closer. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your patience.

With that said, this letter isn’t just about the dynamics of living apart for the time being. It’s more about being in this world at this specific point in time.

I’m writing this for you. But I’m also writing to all the other kids out there (full disclosure: I’m also writing this for me. In fact, a lot for me. Writing is a huge part of how we express our relationship to life itself through structured, coherent thought with some kind of target. Writing here for you plays out differently to how I might write at work or in some other context. So I’ll write pretty closely to how I’d speak to you when we’re having deeper, more reflective conversations. For me, and so many others throughout history, writing is therapeutic). To those kids… I see you. I hear you. I value you. In some crazy almost mysterious way, you are outrageously loved, regardless of your life circumstances right now. And you belong. On this planet. At this time. As person who I hope has the opportunity to live the always unfolding process of becoming.

You’re almost eight years old. You have so much life ahead of you. So much life. In fact, you are so alive. So alive. This is wonderfully clear to anyone who has the opportunity to interact with the beauty of your being.

The thing is, and this isn’t often something adults do a good job of helping kids understand, the life that’s ahead probably isn’t going to be easy. It’ll be challenging in ways you or I can’t yet possibly imagine.

We, as a planetary species, appear to be toggling on / over the precipice. There is so much momentum leading us towards the collapse of so much that so many humans have come to hold near and dear. This whole process is scary. What does the future hold? What power do we actually have to shift this trajectory? What is it that I was able to experience throughout childhood that will never materialise for your generation? How will your generation even develop as persons amidst all this madness?

As I move through the world on an average day, I observe a lot. Some of the things I see because I am paying a certain kind of attention. Some of the things I see I assign certain values to that may differ from others.

Amidst this process of being in the world I experience so much beauty. But I also experience so much tragedy.

Let me give you two recent, very everyday examples.

Yesterday I had a big one-off day in Brisbane. Thankfully Nana was able to help get you to school and swimming after school. I was out of the house for almost 13 hours. On the way home from the train station I picked up some food. I then entered the lift at Nana’s house and bumped into a couple that live in her building. I’d never met them before. Carrying a bag of food, they immediately brightened up and asked what it was we were about to be so lucky to eat (the smell was pretty amazing). For the next 30 seconds we experienced an entirely unique moment of bonding. It was generous, enthusiastic and compassionate. It was such a simple yet beautiful expression of the goodness in everyday human interactions.

This type of stuff happens all the time. All we need to do is open our hearts to the possibility of interacting with others. When we do, far more often than not, we get to experience something beautiful.

The second example comes from a couple of weeks ago. I was interstate for work for the day. I enjoyed some food in the sun to start my day. Before leaving the cafe, I went to order takeaway for a friend. As I was standing in line there was what seemed to be a Dad and his (about 12 year old) son sitting at a table. The dad was leaning back, head entirely directed towards his phone. The boy had literally buried his head in his arms and was hunched over scrolling through what appeared to be TikTok.

As I observed this I felt the overwhelming urge to just cry. Thankfully* I had my sunglasses on. So the few tears that arose were hidden.

*I say thankfully largely out of conditioning. We have been taught that the very realness of our emotions—signals to attune to and learn from—are not typically welcome in polite society. I have now cried a number of times in public. In fact, earlier on the plane I was balling my eyes out whilst reading a tragically beautiful essay on the non-instrumental essentiality of care (I’ll explain what those words mean next time we are together in person). So I’ve been working to heal the shame based identity that so many of us have, an identity that leads us to become far less than the whole of who we are.

Part of this emotional flooding was because I imagined us, in the future, sitting right there. Could we ever possibly interact like this? I hope with every ounce of my being that we will not. The other part was that the context these two people who I presumed to be family members were sharing was effectively dead. There was nothing between them. It felt like a strange disconnect from the wonderful complexity and tragic aliveness of our reality.

I don’t share this particular example to judge the parent or child. Modern life is, excuse my French, a mixing pot of shitfuckery at times (I’ll have to explain that word another time. For now, as we’ve discussed, it’s not a word you’d likely use often. But it is probably a word you will come to know and know well over time). People are outrageously disregulated. Everyone is wounded. Everyone is addicted (by addiction I mean the habitual escape from pain or discomfort, not just the neurochemical / neurophysiological phenomena processes involved in this broader process). So by this definition, mindlessly scrolling your TikTok feed as an escape from the complexity and difficulty of reality is addiction (the process of addiction is of course complex. I won’t get into any more of that for now). Everyone is lost. Everyone is, at times, struggling to stay afloat (for some this is very literal and grounded in the ability to attain the resources required to nourishing the continuation of life, for others, those with plenty enough material resources, the struggling to stay afloat comes in many other forms; keeping up with the Jones’s etc.). And this is for the people who are not living in entirely dysfunctional or war stricken regions of the world.

None of this is to suggest that life is bad everywhere for everyone all at once. It isn’t. And it’s not that simple. It’s more a very brief attempt to allude to the difficulty each and every single human being faces throughout life.

When I was not much older than you (perhaps 12), 50 Cent was my favourite artist. In one of his (in my opinion) best songs he says, “Death gotta be easy coz life is hard, it’ll leave you physically, mentally and emotionally scarred.”

And he was right. Life wounds, inevitably.

But this wounding is not somewhat we need to necessarily run from. This wounding is something we can, over time, build the capacity to meet. In effect, we can become robustly vulnerable as David Whyte would say.

These are all things I will speak to you about more and more, to whatever extent you’re open to being with them at different stages of your life.

Arguably, our civilisation, is deeply wounded. Wounds on top of wounds on top of wounds. Or rather, wounds all the way down (let’s give the turtles a break).

This process of wounding—across generations, combined with other factors like perverse incentive structures, outrageously powerful technology, organising principles that are abstract (I’m thinking neoclassical economics here) and do not even close to meet reality, and so much more—is actually what we must truly attend to if we are to find a way in, through and beyond the predicaments** that have parents like me genuinely grieving for the future you’ve already lost (not in some utterly hopeless way. I am not at all hope-less. But is some fundamentally necessary way. In some way than honours a developing adults ability to dynamically inhabit past, present and future all at once).

**in essence, the wounds cut so deep that most are entirely unaware of their influence. And when we are shaped / conditioned by our wounds, we behave in ways that are very likely misaligned to our greatest potential, whatever that may be. Being conditioned by wounds literally constrains us. So, if we are to established new values systems, new economic systems, new political systems etc. (all of which are entirely possible) the thing that will give rise to their emergence and help sustain them is a less wounded, less conditioned, more purpose-full, more agentic population of well developed people living healthily in relation to one another and the broader systems of life.

Some might claim that there’s grand, large scale action required. This is what matters most. Entirely disrupt our political and economic systems. Fundamentally remake material supply chains. Design thoughtful policies that actually protect people, the rest of the life-world and the biosphere writ large.

I agree with all of this. And I’d add about 1,406,366 items to that laundry list.

But, none of that will happen healthily (by this I mean, it is possible that under some hardcore authoritarian regime we bring material flows back in line with planetary boundaries etc. etc. but this is not the world we want to live in. This world was made to be free in, recognising free is an inherently relational construct!) without a deliberate, caring and genuinely patient process of going towards the wounds that have so fundamentally shaped who each and every one of us has become.

This process of learning about our past, building the capacity to go towards and move beyond that which has wounded us, beginning to exercise more and more agency to consciously alter our conditioning, and actually engaging with the existential or philosophical dimensions of our life (meaning, purpose, values, ways of acting, our worldviews etc.) is the work (in my opinion). And it’s not work that requires us to change the structure of the UN. At least not yet. This is the work that each and every one of us, in our homes, communities, schools and places of employment, can do daily.

And Asta, my darling, this is why I spend so much time with you (outside our vigorous playing and all round everyday life hilarity) helping you learn about your body, your emotions, your thoughts, the things occurring in your life and the way you are relating—consciously and unconsciously—to it all.

I don’t know how, at least materially, given where things are at, we can possibly leave the world in much better shape than we found it. This process of adaptive regeneration is complex and will likely take a lot longer than people think. But I do believe we can leave the world in fundamentally better shape than the day we entered it in relation to how we cultivate actual developmental maturity as human beings. I see examples of this every day. People deconstructing and reconstructing. People unmaking and remaking. People disorienting and reorienting. Themselves… this is a process of working on the self. And it’s a process you have to do with others. No one is mediating in a cave for ten years here. That’s another form of escapism, albeit a very different kind.

This is the work we must do. We must learn about our pasts. We must build the capacity to go towards and move beyond our wounds. We must evolve our conditioning so that we have more agency to act in alignment to what truly matters. And we must do the fundamental, philosophical work, to orient our diverse worldviews in such a way that the best of compossible (compatibly possible for the sake of simplicity) worlds feels closer than ever before.

If we do not, then wounded people will keep wounding. Not just others in the human sense but the very systems we rely upon for life.

How much of this makes sense, I don’t know. Is this even for you? Or the other kids? Or is it for me? Honesty it’s a bit of all of the above. It’s a reminder for me to keep the process alive. To keep meeting my experience. To keep holding the right kind of parental space for yours. For continuing to learn and grow and evolve.

I love you. And I promise that one day, all of these little discussions, practices and rituals (hilarious that autocorrect tried to change rituals to tortillas! Once we have our new home let’s make sure we have a Mexican night like we always used to) we engage in together—even the simple things like gratitude practice or tracking bodily sensations and staying just a little with the difficulty—will mean something.

You mean everything to me. Words will never do justice to the joy, significance and love you have brought into this world. This world, I can confidently say, hand on heart, is so much better with you in it.

And there go the tears again…

Yours,

Unconditionally.

Infinity.

Forever.

Dad

P.S. I did say I was done with Substack, adding the caveat it may not be done for good but done for now. I don’t know if I’ll publish regularly here. But today, after writing this, I felt compelled to share it. If it helps just one parent or one child or any other human that fits into any stage of life, well, it’s totally worth it.

Okay, by now we’re all aware that this platform has undergone at least a little enshitification. This isn’t to suggest said enshitification doesn’t occur along some kind of dynamic spectrum. Of course it does (arguably substack remains one of the ‘better’ online places to co-inhabit). Nor is this to suggest that I’m in some mode of binary thinking. Thankfully I’m not. At least not often(?). But I have gotten to the point where, for me, entirely personally, being on this platform doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I’ve met a bunch of brilliant people here. For this I’m truly grateful. I’ve read a bunch of fantastic content. For this I am truly grateful. But again, on the whole, relative to how I most want to live my life (how I most want to ‘spend’ my time), it’s time to move on (I have been trending towards a more digitally minimalistic life for quite some time, so this isn’t something at all new. I’ve never had most social media accounts. And the one I did have*—Twitter—was deleted looong ago. This is not to say I am anti digital technology or anything like that. It’s rather a move towards a little less noise and more deliberate interaction with said techno-sphere).

*I do still have LinkedIn… How long will it last? I can’t say for sure. But its days feel well and truly numbered.

Now, if you’re looking for some truly rigorous critical perspective that articulates my why, you ain’t gonna get it. Not today. That’d kinda defeat the purpose of what I’m attempting in this brief bon voyage.

What I’d like to do, as the thing that really matters, is say thank you to all who have ever supported me here. It genuinely means so much. Especially given the dynamics of our wild worlding process where it feels near impossible to qualitatively interact with anything online.

I’ve been amidst a multi year process of un-making and remaking, disorienting and reorienting, unravelling and transforming (a necessary and healthy part of being alive, I’ve come to learn). I’m now in a context where I’m ready, at various levels, to more clearly enact this reorientation.

This means I can live with a bit more freedom, a bit more focus, plenty of playfulness, and a heck of a lot less screen time (outside of specific activities that require screens).

For those interested, my life is very much focused on those I love. Everything I’m doing is in large part about deeply caring for those inter/intra-creative fields of compossibility and ensuring I have as much open time with these beautiful souls as possible.

As a general rule, I’m aiming to deepen my relationship to reality*, in whatever ways that is possible.

*I shan’t attempt to explicate exactly what I mean here. But, if it’s truly piqued your interest, perhaps we can find the time to share space and engage in this process together.

From a work standpoint, I’m focused yet pretty diversified (this works really well for me).

I’m currently leading applied AI ethics work for the federal government. I see a lot of potential here and hope to continue experiencing direct, indirect and systemic impacts resulting (in part) from my contributions. This builds on 15 years of sociotechnical ethics and frankly feels more important than ever (for what I hope are overwhelmingly obvious reasons, especially if you’ve ever read anything I’ve written).

I’m going to begin philosophical counselling. Exactly how this plays out remains a mystery. But over the summer I’m going to prepare to start this formally, thanks to the work I’ve been doing with Philosophical Health International. I’d like to say a special thanks to Dr. Luis de Miranda for his guidance and support over the past 12 months.

I’ll continue to be deeply involved in, and committed to, the arts. This will play out diversely, but primarily through Nightfall (the artist collective I co-own) and the always evolving project Esther and I are co-leading (we’re genuinely enlivened by this work and see a lot of potential that we hope to try and crealise) at the intersection of eco philosophy and nature photography.

I really hope this plays a bigger role in our future. There’s something truly enlivening about the creative act.

I will be attempting to find time for deeper writing activities. But I am in no rush. I’ve struggled to do that here, which is one of many reasons I tend to post what I consider brief musings rather than rigorous essays (I also love the spoken word, the pathways we can explore when journeying together in real-time dialogue. So finding ways to do more of that feels important to me).

And I’ll be spending as much time as possible doing this living thing (whatever that means given life’s evolving constraints). Weird, I know. But the basics (in no particular order / value hierarchy)… music events, slow mornings, late nights, bush walks, beach swims, gardening, experimenting in the kitchen, (sooooo much!) daddy daughter time (for the parents out there, you know that there is no prose that can do justice to the meaningfulness of this wonderful and sometimes deeply challenging existential responsibility), comedy, community support and events of various kinds, really taking time to be with that which requires attention (within, between and beyond me), falling ever more deeply in love with my life partner and our life together, plus so much more.

Alright, that’s certainly enough.

I always sign off by saying, “with love as always”. I hope you get that I really mean it.

So, with love as always my fellow earthians. Here’s to you, us, and all life process on this stunningly beautiful planet we call home.

P.S. Please don’t hesitate to connect with me more directly if you’d like to stay in touch.

P.P.S. Whether this is truly final or simply a significant hiatus is something that will play out over time. As you know, prediction is hard, especially about the future! So I will align to the colloquialism, “never say never!” if only as a hedge ;)

P.P.P.S Here’s the latest project Esther and I published. We still have a few in the backlog and have plenty more planned.

There’s plenty more where that came from. You can view the rest of the project (it was too big… substack wouldn’t let me post it all…) here (or await our website which will launch soon).

Yesterday, however, I was very kindly invited to speak at the AIxLeadership Conference at Swinburne University in Melbourne (I was speaking in a personal / independent capacity. Nothing I shared necessarily represented the views of government).

I did something different to all other speakers in that I had no slides and I very directly engaged the audience, both through some basic binary questions and in actual dialogue.

The content below, although not verbatim (I work ‘off cusp’ so to speak, attuning to the dynamics of the room etc. So I never really know what will come out), was written to help clarify my thinking. Because the talk itself was so well received, I figured it’d be worth sharing.

Thank you for having me today.

I’m an applied ethicist who has been working on sociotechnical systems for well over a decade. If you’d like to find out more about my work or connect directly, please reach out on LinkedIn.

Given we don’t have much time (15 mins! I actually finished in just over 13…), I’ll get stuck right in.

To start with, I’d like to read a comment a philosophical colleague of mine, Dr. Luis dr Miranda, recently posted on LinkedIn:

“I appreciate your insistence that ethical formation must precede AI-literacy. That is a crucial reminder. At the same time, the way we speak about “teaching students to make good decisions” can sound unintentionally condescending, as if ethical judgment were a simple deficit to be corrected from the outside.

Since Aristotle is pictured, it may matter to recall what he actually writes: ethical judgment (phronēsis) cannot be “taught” in the didactic sense. It is cultivated. It is trained through lived experience, mutual inquiry, and the daily exercise of choice. The good life (eudaimonia) is not content to be transmitted. It is energeia, the active realization of potentiality through virtuous action. Aristotle emphasizes that this requires philosophizing together in honesty, among peers, in a community where meaning is co-created. Ethical discernment grows through dialogue, not directives.”

This dialogical process, perhaps in a slightly more practical and somewhat less poetic sense, is what I’d like to talk more about today.

Now, many of you will be aware that our government communicated and adopted 8 AI ethics principles back in 2019. This was based on the 2017 body of work, Ethically Aligned Design, from IEEE.

For government, these principles exist in relation to the technical AI standard and other artefacts and responsibilities. The same goes for industry, recognising there are notable differences in most cases, such as the voluntary nature of the principles for industry.

The principles exist in the context of broader approaches to AI risk, assurance and governance. This is rather multidimensional in nature, requiring diverse perspective, skills, tools, practices and workflows.

Before moving on, let me say something briefly about ethical principles.

Principles alone cannot tell us how to act in given situation. They are not complete or coherent systems for ethical decision making. Instead, they provide a useful reference point for diverse reflection and deliberation. Through dialogue, they help us recognise and remember the ethical considerations that most prominently shape our reflection, deliberation and decision-making.

The process of reflecting and deliberating as a diverse group, considering each of the principles both directly and in relation to one another, helps surface insights that a given team can act on. Insights that guide us towards the best reasons for action.

After all, as the old saying goes, just because we can doesn’t meant mean we should.

Now, in my experience, I see a lot of emphasis placed on certain aspects of AI assurance or governance. But I see close to no emphasis on actually doing ethics. Close to no evidence of systematically engaging in the type of reflective, deliberative, imaginative dialogue I am referring to.

And this is a big part of what I do in my work. I help organisations build capacity so that this—systematically reflecting on these principles, usefully engaging with moral theory, and making rigorous and informed judgments about what and what not to do—can become a valuable contribution to their overall approach to AI innovation and governance.

What I’d like to do now is simulate a little of this with you.

So let’s take the first AI ethics principle, Human, societal and environmental wellbeing. That is actually the value statement. The enactive statement (action oriented), the principle, is AI systems should benefit individuals, society and the environment.

But what does this really mean?

To explore this, I’d like to engage in some dialogue. And this will require at least some of you to participate.

Let me start with some questions…

Hands up if you’ve been involved in proposing, assessing, building or using an AI system recently?

<the entire room raises a hand. Approx 150 attendees across academia and industry>

Great.

Hands up if formal ethical dialogue, relative to Australia’s 8 AI ethics principles or something like it, formed part of this process?

<two people raise their hand>

Hands up if that process was formally recorded, documented and evidenced?

<the same two people>

Hands up if that process tangibly changed what you built and how, or what you used and how?

<the same two people>

Hands up if you regularly come back to principles like this on an ongoing basis?

<the same two people>

*Noting that, Although I wrote this content to structure my thinking only (the way it played out was different), I did ask these questions.

In a room of ~150 academics and industry folks, all of whom were using AI and many of whom were building systems, only two raised their hand to say they had explicitly referenced these principles.

So, my rather confident prediction about the ethical intent to action gap was unfortunately all too spot on…

Okay, what you’re probably seeing here is what’s sometimes called the ethical intent to action gap (I actually explained what this means and gave direct, geographically relevant evidence of this).

Almost all of us, and I would hazard the guess it’s all of us in this room today, have good intentions.

But good intentions are not ethics. Ethics is the process of justifying the best reasons for action. Ethics is the deliberative process of reflecting on our values and attempting to act in closest alignment with them. Ethics is messy, uncertain, challenging and confronting.

Yet it is something we have to do. It’s something we have to do together. And it’s only something we can truly learn by engaging in the process in real life. This is where genuine moral sensitivity and a trained skilfulness at identifying, usefully discerning and navigating ethical issues comes from. It doesn’t just come from reading and reading and reading about moral theory. Although, I would argue this certainly helps.

Now, back to Principle 1. Can someone give me an example of how this principle guided reflection and influenced real-world AI system development?

*In this section one of the two participants offered an excellent account of her reasoning in relation to this principle. I then explored the specific metrics or reference points I’d use, namely planetary boundaries, Happy CAMPER and wide-boundary ‘societal health’ perspectives.

This was very brief, but it showed the type of dialogical practice I was referring to.

I’d like to invite you all going forward to make more time, even just a little bit, to deeply engage in ethics as dialogical practice. Without it, you’re not really doing ethics. And if that’s the case you’re very likely selling your initiatives short in various ways, many of which will likely be unexpected.

Thank you.

…

Now, if you’ve followed my work for a while, you’ll know there’s kind of nothing new in here. I’ve been claiming what Ted Lechterman framed ‘ethicophobia’ for a number of years. And… I’ve been working hard to try and do something about it.

But, the pattern we’re seeing remains the same. Right now we’re amidst a classic multi-polar trap. We’re in an AI arms race. The race itself has limited / poorly defended philosophical underpinning at best. And of course, the whole paradigm within which said AI arms race is occurring is way out whack with the stuff that really matters (i.e. biospheric dynamics and social foundations).

So, as always, I ask that we take stock, slow down a little, and really ground our reasoning in wide boundary analysis / situatedness… Oh, and don’t forget to do a little ethics!

With love as always.

Sam and I decided to cover worldviews as the core topic of this discussion because of the fact that so many of us seem to have had experiences where we are talking over or around one another, without ever grounding our ‘dialogue’ in something deeper (ie the fundamental lens through which we experience the world. Doing this massively hinders our capacity for sense-making).

In organisations, it’s my experience that this—the multitude of worldviews that are almost never explicated—leads to unproductive tension that limits the wide boundary effectiveness of organisational processes (and causes all kinds of dissonance, moral and otherwise). As a result, I propose genuinely light touch ways through which we can begin explicating individual and collective (organisational) worldviews, so that we can deepen our understanding of difference, work more productively with the tension of difference, and find ways towards more coherent organisational practice.

We reference various examples, talk about specific tools and approaches, and of course, crack a few jokes along the way.

I trust you will enjoy, and perhaps benefit from this discussion.

With love as always.

Here’s Philai, one of the tools I reference from Philosophical Health International.

Here’s ‘Tetractys of philosophical health: A structured approach to aligning personal cosmology, higher purpose, and practices of the compossible’.

And finally… The questions (noting these are pretty much the same questions proposes in micro-philosophy. Kudos Paul)!

1. What kind of world / universe are we in?

2. How can we know?

3. What truly matters in this world?

4. How should we act?

This is amongst the many reasons I so strongly encourage people to read the paper, ‘Digitalization and the Anthropocene’ by Creutzig et al.

The paper helps steer us away from blind, inherently problematic (and frankly, deeply immature) techno-optimism, and towards more wide-boundary anticipatory thinking about the real ‘material’ and ‘immaterial’ impacts (from the most positive to the most negative) of sociotechnical systems. In other words, towards wise sociotechnical systems.

There is much that could be said about all of this, but today I’d like to hone focus a little and discuss art.

Now, what is art? What is its nature? What is its function?

I don’t claim to ‘hold’ the philosophy of art. That’d be ridiculous.

To me, however, art is something like:

• An open and curious attunement to self, other, world, universe

• A deep connection and relation to self, other, world, universe

• Self, other, world, universe materialised through me (the artist)

• An orientation, practice, and always evolving set of dynamic processes; felt, sensed, explored, reflected, refined, recycled

• A playful embodiment of the universal property of creativity.

Art is a gift to both artist and audience.

We could build on this to suggest that art is The CREAL expressing itself through me (Rubin would refer to this as ‘Source’. The parallel to this process philosophy from Luis de Miranda—The CREAL—for physicists might be the universal wave function. I don’t believe there’s one right way to relate to this, but there do seem to be many useful AND beautiful ways).

I bring this up because art and artists have become one of the most talked about groups when it comes to the (largely) deleterious impacts of Generative AI.

“AI has been stealing their work”, without permission, and using it in various ways, to generate (largely crappy) ‘art like’ outputs.

This is, of course, deeply problematic. But today I’m not going to talk about all of the whys. Instead I will say, yes, it is doing this, but it’s not using this process to create more art. Because AI cannot create art.

Art requires perspective. And AI has no perspective.

Art requires care. And AI does not care.

Art requires an ‘inner world’. And AI has no inner world (whether it can at some point depends on so many factors it’s crazy. And there is unavoidable metaphyscial speculation involved in all of it that far too many folks miss when making certain claims about ‘AI consciousness’).

To call on Miranda once more, AI is a form of analytical intelligence (one could argue that it can participate in a form of dialectical intelligence also, but only when a human uses a language model as a form of dialogical partner. But that’s not super important right now). It is not a form of crealectic intelligence, a difference that makes a difference, because it is this intelligence that makes art possible (we could also use the language of relevance realisation here to make a somewhat similar point).

We could also call upon Vervaeke’s Ways of Knowing and suggest that ‘doing art’ requires perspectival, procedural and likely participatory knowledge.

Art cannot result from the re-presentation of propositional knowledge alone.

None of this negates the challenges artists and arts culture faces. But it serves as a strong reminder that AI, at least in anything like its current form, cannot do art. The process of doing, sharing and experiencing art—or more broadly, living artistically—cannot be taken away.

Because of this, I’m one of many folks encouraging us to reflect on this current ‘moment’ as an opportunity. An opportunity to more deeply reconsider what it is that makes us human; what it means to be human. Because it is from this basis of deep reflection / introspection and interoception (which, is of course an unavoidably relational process) that we have the opportunity to cultivate better ways of being, doing and becoming.

So… What art have you created lately? How did you feel engaged in that process? What have you learned about yourself and the world through engaging in that process? What exciting projects are you envisaging in your near future?

With love as always.

P.S. Some recent art from my entirely wonderful 7 year old daughter, Asta.

As we’ve increasingly internalised a mechanistic view of universal process, however, we seem to have lost our connection to the history of the word, which of course has organ(ic) origins i.e. an instrument (a part of the body for instance) that performs some function.

This disconnection (from the etymology) is important.

For the ‘leaders’ of public and private organisations, reconnecting with the root of the word seems likely to enhance their capacity to understand the nature* and function of their organisation within its broader context (i.e. its historicity and the broader dynamics of ‘the system’). Deepening their understanding of this will equip them to make sense of patterns, explore and align to what truly matters, and consistently express ways of organising (behaving) that are more adaptive and fit for constantly evolving (normative i.e. something we would designate as 'genuinely good) purposes.

*I’m very happy to expand on this point. But the TL;DR is that most folks within orgs take the ‘organisation as machine’ thing a bit too literally, and don’t quite realise that this happens all the time (i.e. a leading theory on how certain things work gets taken from one context to another. A decent example of which is the idea that the brain is like a computer… When we lose track of the history, or shift from metaphoric to literal interpretation, we run into potentially dangerous territory). The organisation is not at all like a machine. It’s more like a super-organism.

I’m writing this today because I had a really beautiful discussion with two friends and colleagues yesterday— and —at the stunning new CoLabs site, where I am both Philosopher in Residence (action philosophy at the intersection of ontology, epistemology and ethics, in service of deconstructing, reconstructing, enacting and refining 'organisational world views'), and much more recently, Entrepreneur in Residence (theories and living practices for systemic venture building).

We explored the ‘stuck-ness’ of ‘organisational realities’ (in their broadest context, considering the historicity of modern attempts to organise, the ideologies and stories, the power dynamics, the lack of empirical grounding behind a lot of neo-classic economics, the profit maximisation motive, the narrow definition of profit etc.), and really sat with the tensions people within organisations are experiencing (trying to deeply empathise with the human beings having these human experiences. As an example, the challenge some leaders have given they are basically forced to profit maximise, but know this process of profit maximisation causes certain forms of harm that they are not at all comfortable with, and may well be eroding the capacity for such profits in the future, because GDP growth and environmental degradation are 99% correlated. In essence, said profit maximisation now is essentially a corporation eating its own future lunch!).

We agreed that many (most, if we are being honest) organisations are largely unfit for the purposes of today, let alone the purposes of tomorrow. Which is why we very clearly need to explore, experiment with, nurture and then expand (I used expand rather than scale very deliberately for now) ways of organising that are in alignment with, for instance, the reality of biospheric systems, the reality of material flows, the desire to help people self-determine and live both healthy and truly dignified lives etc. etc. etc. etc.

Of course, there is no easy fix. No one way forward.

We need to walk many paths*, doing so in relation, so that our walking of each unique path has the potential to supports the whole (which also brings to mind the work we seeded on Collective Futurecrafting, which is now stewarded by the very talented and hugely heart-full Mathew Mytka. You can read the original submission to the Australian Government here).

*This frame draws from a wonderful conversation between and Jean Boulton, that I can’t recommend highly enough. I was brought to tears on more than a few occasions.

Love & Philosophy

#60: The Dao of Complexity with theoretical physicist Jean Boulton

A heart-meets-mind discussion about complexity science and its suprising relation to Daoism, with physicist Jean Boulton. The conversation explores how stability and change are part of a reflexive interweaving of relationships, the importance of actions and behaviors in co-creating the future, and the role of compassion and love in fostering resilience…

Listen now

a year ago · 13 likes · Andrea Hiott

This claim I am making is exactly why organisations need philosophy. Or rather, need to engage in the process of philosophy-ing.

This process can be thought of as a meta-technology of sorts (sounds super enticing, huh?). It enables us to operate above the everyday (not instead of, but in genuine addition to), checking in on where we have come from, where we are, and where we are going with rigour, humility and deep care.

It helps keep us honest, avoid foolishness and self deception, and encourages us to consciously evolve in alignment with what we most care about.

This is why and I are doing the series we are doing. It’s why I am so motivated to continue showing up the way that I am. And it’s why I invite you, whoever you are, wherever you are, and from whatever organisation you work with, to begin engaging in this process.

Only in togetherness will we find fundamentally better paths forward.

With love as always.

P.S. As an addition provocation, I share the below from John Vervaeke’s YouTube channel.

“At every moment of your conscious life, you are overwhelmed with a flood of possible information, sensations, thoughts, choices.

And yet—somehow—you are not paralyzed by this.

You manage to zero in on what matters. You can discern what is relevant.

And this capacity is not a passive ability—it is actively realized.

This is relevance realization.

And legacy religions—through myths, rituals, symbols, sacred narratives, communal practices, and contemplative disciplines—helped people how to perceive, how to interpret, and how to participate in the world.

They offered a living grammar—a structure of practices that helped people continually realize relevance.

But those systems evolved within a world that no longer exists.

Their practices often remain static while our informational landscape mutates at a pace they cannot match.

Your attention is hijacked the moment you wake up.

What you find important (what you care about) even what you believe is being co-authored by systems optimized not for truth or wisdom—but for engagement and profit.

You are embedded in a vast informational environment that overwhelms your inherited systems of sense-making (bombarded by competing claims on your attention, your identity, and your value structure) absorbing the judgments, values, and perspectives of a collective cognitive apparatus that is not under your conscious control.

And there is more:

When you used to ask “What should I do?” or “What does this mean?”, you might have turned to an elder, a pastor, a sacred text.

Now you might ask an AI.

AI is now mediating your agency—sometimes before you even reflect on it.

And then there is the deep pluralism in which one is directly, experientially aware that multiple traditions exist.

With a few taps, you can hear a Tibetan lama explain Dzogchen, a Sufi chant the names of God, or a neuroscientist break down mystical experiences.

This undermines old adaptive strategies:

Convert the Other, conquer them, infantilize them, or at best tolerate them.

It confronts legacy religions with a new kind of crisis—a crisis of legitimacy—because they can no longer claim totality.

It doesn’t mean that all traditions are the same—but it does mean that the sacred is showing up in many places, through many forms.

It requires a new kind of posture—a shift to dialogos.”

You can’t.

You have to love by living and live by loving.”

This is how and I ended the sixth episode of Philosophy & Organisations.

This episode is the result of a longer conversation, the first two thirds of which became the previous episode we posted.

What’s most interesting for me in this discussion, and perhaps something that Jes and I orient towards in most of our conversations, is the way in which our lived experience provides so many teachable moments, from the basic and practical through to the transcendental (and the ways in which we can value, and in important ways, rely on this first-person process).

We are not abstracting ourselves out of the ‘knowledge’ equation. We are attempting to embrace, with all of the nuance, complexity and uncertainty, our being in this world (in a sense, as I’ve described before, we are balancing different ways of knowing. This is not easy, because we’ve become rather obsessed with the propositional over the last few centuries).

In fact, Jes gets at this beautifully in her latest post:

wild:philosophy

What it Means to Practice Philosophy - A Short Introduction (part II)

Hello and welcome to wild:philosophy…

Read more

a year ago · 2 likes · Jessica Böhme

Prescribing a new philosophy isn’t enough.

What we need is the courage and discipline to practice philosophy - for ourselves and collectively.

To not just adopt ideas, but to question, wrestle, reflect, practice, and make meaning in real time, in real life.

Because real transformation — personal or systemic — can’t be imposed.

It has to be discovered.

And that’s why I keep returning to philosophy. Not as a fixed doctrine, but as a daily act.

Not to find “the answer”, but to stay in relationship with the questions that matter.

That’s what wild:philosophy is about.

Not a map, but a Waymaking, as Andrea Hiott might say.
Not a system, but a practice.
Not my way — but maybe an invitation into yours.

When Jes and I talk about philsophy-ing, we are referring to a living process that plays out at ‘various scales’. Not a specific view per se, but a relational process that’s enacted again and again and again, very imperfectly, by human beings. A process that enhances our individual and collective capacity to (at the very least, drawing inspiration from and his micro-philosophy framework):

• Know ourselves, each other, the world and our broader context (cosmos)

• Define what we care for, and

• Consistently behave in ways that align to what matters

And although this goes against much of the last few hundred years, I believe we both recognise that we—the subjects in said equation—are as rich a source of inspiration, information, insight and learning, as anything there is or can be (in certain contexts, of course).

*None of this is to say that the ‘checks and balances’ that feature in the various processes of doing science aren’t important. They are and they have clearly helped radically enhance our capacity to know certain things about ourselves, each other, the world and our broader context (cosmos). No need to caveat further right now.

So, without further ado, enjoy!

A quick reminder that we are covering the following types of (formal-ish) questions in this series:

• What do we actually mean by philosophy?

• What’s the value of philosophy in organisations?

• How is philosophy compared / contrasted (equivalency), relative to other organisational functions?

• How can philosophy help organisations interface with genuine uncertainty and complex challenges no organisation has ever faced?

• How can diverse ethical theories or lenses help inform decision making within organisations?

• How can philosophy help organisations more responsibly and effectively design, develop, and use AI (or not)?

• How can philosophy help us better understand the role of trust, and its importance, within organisations (and beyond)?

• Beyond profit, how can philosophy help an organisation define its telos? And how can defining this inform strategy and support culture?

• How can philosophy enhance an organisations’ capacity to identify and mitigate ‘consequential uncertainty’ (i.e. risk)?

• How can philosophy inform authentic progress in boardrooms (how they are comprised, how they collaborate, the ways in which they communicate etc.)?

• How can existentialist ideas about meaning, freedom and authenticity apply to ‘employee engagement’, motivation and combatting workplace alienation?

• How can a deeper understanding of epistemology improve an organisations approach to data and ‘evidence based’ decision making?

• How does one’s philosophy influence their leadership style, and how might this impact (or be impacted by) organisational culture?

• What philosophical questions should organisations be asking about the future of work and their role in ‘shaping it’?

Please add others you’d like us to explore in the comments.

Or better yet, join us on an episode!!!

With love as always.

In my attempt to say goodbye, give thanks, and open to new possibilities, I began walking around the park my house backed onto (before a little ritual in the house and on the shared rooftop). The park has been a very special place for me, my parter, my daughter and our incredible little canine family member.

About half way around my first lap, a flock of approximately 60 black cockatoos flew over me. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. In fact, living in the inner-city, you’d be hard pressed to see one a year.

As they flew over me, without knowing their symbolic meaning/s to different groups of First Nations Australians, I intuited something special about the experience. Tears began to surface. I didn’t pull my phone out. I just observed their flight. I felt the significance of the (actual) occasion.

This seemed to spark a series of interesting events. The specifics of which aren’t important right now, especially given the fact I’m not making a claim about causality (itself a rather dubious concept). That is not the point of this short musing today, something that will hopefully become evident shortly…

But, later in the day, after all rituals had reached their completion, I engaged in a little search to better understand what this might represent.

And, what I found pretty much summed up what I had felt.

As alluded to in the note above, I am not here to make specific metaphysical claims / attempt to convince you of some specific set of propositional beliefs. In fact, I’m not even doing that myself in relation to this experience.

What I would like to do is use this example—the experience I had today—as a way to encourage greater openness to mystery, a deeper appreciation of beauty, and a more reverent relation to the rather wonderful ‘magic’ of existence.

By magic I’m being fairly colloquial for the sake of simplicity, and mean something like that which cannot be fully explained, perhaps now or ever, yet also requires no explanation in order to be satisfying, moving and / or meaningful. This isn’t necessarily a direct comparison of Crowley’s take on ‘magick’, which is the “science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will”. If I were to really get into it, it’s probably closer to Layman Pascal’s take on ‘xagick’. Yet, and this might be important, it isn’t necessarily equal to a more historical take on magic that could be equated to a form of naiveté, ignorance etc. But again, those details don’t matter too much for today. Let’s steer clear of definitions and go with this flow together.

As I write this encouragement, the following quote feels rather fitting (as a way to help situate the context within which I’m personally approaching the increasingly en vogue topic of mysticism):

“The way to true mysticism leads up through rational thought to deep experience of the world … . We must all venture once more to be ‘thinkers,’ so as to reach mysticism, which is the only direct and the only profound world-view.” - Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics, 1923

What Schweitzer describes maps to my experience.

My ‘openness to mystery’ has emerged over many years and through varying modes of inquiry. It may well have been with me in early life (meaning this is somewhat of a return / remembering, albeit a very different expression, with levels of complexification entirely unimaginable earlier in life), but this sense of the mysterious (again, that I likely revered, at least implicitly, early in life) eventually became an obsession with (certain types of) explanation, justification, mechanisms of action, and all manner of other things (attempting to explain / justify why isn’t important for now.).

What I mean by openness to mystery, however, unlike the ‘definition’ of magic, is important (today). I’m not encouraging entirely wild metaphysical speculation (I’m also not discouraging it. Important to note here, even though there’s sometimes confusion on this point, that metaphysics isn’t equal to wild speculation. Not even close. It’s an attempt to ‘go beyond’ that which can perhaps be suitably explained by other means. But of course, there is no science free of metaphysics or philosophy more generally. There is no science free of observers or the historicity to which it / they belongs. It’s just that most of the ‘deeper assumptions’ or ‘positions’ underlying the scientific process, its institutions etc. are all too infrequently explicated. This deserves much more than I can give it, so leaving for now). Rather I mean something a tad more practical. I’m encouraging, as I’ve been attempting to practice myself now for quite some time, a deeper sense of awe and wonder (including a wonder with / of ‘situatedness’ i.e. the broader context within which you experience said phenomena), something that we can experience everyday… Something that enhances our experience of what seems likely to be one very finite life.

For instance, imagine if my relation to the huge flock of black cockatoos today went something like this:

• Hmmmm, an unusually large flock of black cockatoos

• That’s odd. They’re endangered. I wonder why there’s so many of them?

• Perhaps they’re fleeing from their home

• Someone, somewhere, might be cutting down a bunch of trees and further eroding their local ecology

• Fuck! Doesn’t that suck!

• Continue walking

No awe. No wonder. Non reverence.

Of course, I’m being a tad facetious. The dot points could well be a plausible(ish) practical explanation (the details of which, if they were in fact true, would be deeply important and not something I’d ever shy away from. Especially given this is happening EVERYWHERE, basically all the time. Again, this isn’t the point for now), but the experience I had would have meant nothing. It wouldn’t have emoted me. It wouldn’t have moved me (largely because I would have been focusing only on the propositional, and entirely missing the perspectival and participatory. See reference below to video on ways of knowing for more).

By simply being with the experience, and allowing myself to really feel, I was literally moved to tears. It felt, whether true in a propositional sense or not, like something important was happening, and that I had participated in that in some small way.

Now, for the ‘rationalists’ amongst you, please don’t take offence. I am not saying that our attempt to explain certain phenomena through certain means is unimportant or unhelpful (if you are taking offence, I’d encourage you to watch this on ways of knowing. It’ll likely satisfy your desire for explanation and justification, but also encourage a bit less binary emphasis on propositional knowledge). What I’m getting at here—to again reiterate my core and very condensed point—is that our everyday experience of life is very likely enhanced when we embrace awe and mystery (and guess what? We have lots of empirical evidence to strongly support such an assertion). Our everyday, and thus our overall life, is likely to be enhanced when we cultivate reverence for our lived experience, as well as for the world within, and because of which, we exist / belong.

So with that, I’d love to know whether you have an example from your own life like this? When did you really feel embedded in your context, without the need to explain propositionally, where the experience moved you deeply? Did you attempt to derive specific meaning from the experience? Or was the experience itself plenty of enough-ness?

Building from this, how do you balance such an appreciation for what is occurring, with the usefulness of certain explanatory and justificatory methods?

Share away. I’m all ears.

With love as always.

As with our previous episode, we were just chatting about our human-ing. Jes then hit record. And we continued from there (breaking our recording down into two parts. The second part will be shared later this week or early next).

This saw us explore money (i.e. a claim on energy, not something we get into here, but a video I’d STRONGLY encourage you to watch), financialising nature (and its various challenges, using the Three Horizons Framework to ground this process), biophilia, cosmological circumference of care, the ‘journey’ we are on (from the foundations of formal philosophy through the scientific revolution through to modelling world process with increasing complexity, through to a return to our embodiment and inescapable relationality) and how aspects of ‘going forward’ may end up looking a little like some ‘parts of our past’.

We also began exploring human development through different lenses, along with the way that process relates to the complexity of our shared development as a species and civilisation (which gets us into flow states, certain practices, psychedelics etc.).

As always, Jes and I are engaged in shared living process, attempting to ground our explorations of the relation(s) between self / other / world / cosmos in both our lived experience and various theoretical contributions.

If you’re enjoying this series, please consider adding to some of the formal questions we are intended to explore:

• What do we actually mean by philosophy?

• What’s the value of philosophy in organisations?

• How is philosophy compared / contrasted (equivalency), relative to other organisational functions?

• How can philosophy help organisations interface with genuine uncertainty and complex challenges no organisation has ever faced?

• How can diverse ethical theories or lenses help inform decision making within organisations?

• How can philosophy help organisations more responsibly and effectively design, develop, and use AI (or not)?

• How can philosophy help us better understand the role of trust, and its importance, within organisations (and beyond)?

• Beyond profit, how can philosophy help an organisation define its telos? And how can defining this inform strategy and support culture?

• How can philosophy enhance an organisations’ capacity to identify and mitigate ‘consequential uncertainty’ (i.e. risk)?

• How can philosophy inform authentic progress in boardrooms (how they are comprised, how they collaborate, the ways in which they communicate etc.)?

• How can existentialist ideas about meaning, freedom and authenticity apply to ‘employee engagement’, motivation and combatting workplace alienation?

• How can a deeper understanding of epistemology improve an organisations approach to data and ‘evidence based’ decision making?

• How does one’s philosophy influence their leadership style, and how might this impact (or be impacted by) organisational culture?

• What philosophical questions should organisations be asking about the future of work and their role in ‘shaping it’?

Oh, before we go, here’s a sneak peak (without the project description, I’ll share that some other time) of the shoot I mentioned with my partner, Esther. It’s titled, ‘Where did all the colour go?’

With love as always.

I’m rather interested in how well this key topic lands with you, given it’s something that has been a common feature of my discussions of late.

This process of actively deconstructing and reconstructing ‘ourselves’—which really means the possibility of transforming our ways of being, doing and becoming—feels very alive. It’s playing out in so many different ways for people all around the world. Personally, I feel deeply grateful that this is now a thing, that it’s talked about, and that many of us are gaining a lot from these shared processes of (re)discovery and character evolution.

Something (among many ‘things’) that’s important here, however, as folks like (a big thank you to my partner, Esther, for introducing me to ailey’s work) and call such clear attention to, is that so much of what’s thought of as ‘disregulation’ (/ any other frame) is often adaptation (the organism responding to the context of world). This response to world can, for various reasons, get somewhat stuck. The adaptation becomes maladaptive. This *maladaptive pattern/s can cause all manner of ‘issues’.

*I’m very much in the camp of using wide boundary thinking in this context, recognising that many of these ‘maladaptive patterns’ are very likely healthy (or at least entirely justifiable) responses to a rather unhealthy context (i.e. dynamics of the *metacrisis at every level, from the inner to familial to the inter-nation state and beyond).

*I’ll note here that the metacrisis seems to be something like the ‘wrong relation to life itself’, along with its myriad consequences, driven disproportionally by certain actors and actions. I’ve discussed this on many occasions, so will skip for now.

Thankfully these ‘issues’ need not be our fate. We can, in various ways, exercise agency and ‘evolve’. The same is true of groups of humans organising (i.e organisations).

So although it may feel hard to meaningfully shift the ‘inner workings’ of an organisation, thus changing the way it shows up in and impacts the world, it can absolutely be done. And, I’d argue, it needs to be done if we’re to really have a chance of moving fairly adaptively through certain unavoidable challenges to come in the coming months, years and decades.

I could say so much more. But this is my time limit (it’s school holidays, and dad has gotta make dinner!).

With love as always.

P.S. If anything I’ve touched on (and I get it, I’ve just touched on a few things at best) requires deeper explanation, please ask questions in the comments. When I have more time I’ll elaborate.

You know that feeling. You’re atop a mountain, cliff, hill, or perhaps even a skyscraper. You are flooded with a deep sense of perspective. You see (experience) whole-ness that evades your daily-ness. Problems you’ve been grappling with are often clarified. Your world, whatever that means, makes so much more sense (this could be tragic, beautiful, anything in between, or both at the same time!!!).

This is something of a mini—and far more accessible version—of what’s been dubbed the ‘Overview Effect’, a ‘cognitive shift’ reported by astronauts that can be described as "a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus" (lol!).

In short, the moment where an astronaut sees the ‘whole’ of the earth from afar and exclaims, with everything that is their energy-information (eco)system, “Holy Fuck!”

This experience is a difference that makes a difference.

And this is the type of difference so many of us (perhaps especially those in positions of power and influence) need.

A waking up, as it were, to new possibilities of (co)creative realisation.

But…

And this is the kicker, like the post come down from a psychedelic experience (whether induced by a compound or practice), we then return to our daily-ness. We have to return to our daily-ness.

So, the question becomes, how do we ‘carry forward’ the perspective we have attained? How does this difference make a difference beyond the moments atop the mountain? How do we integrate so that we can express new ways of being, doing and becoming?

Are you sitting with this question or something like it?

I reckon you might be.

If so, I invite a journey-ing together (starting simply in the comments).

With love as always.

This episode was the second we recorded last week, and in some ways builds upon the first. We published this one first because my daughter’s face enters the frame in the other recording (we need to get rid of / blur it). For some this will not seem like an important point. But, I’m doing my best to keep her (especially any ‘profile’ of her) offline until she feels ready to make decisions about how she wants to actively participate in various sociotechnical ecosystems (that itself is a living, dialogical process that she and I are engaged in together). Because of my history studying these modern systems using wide boundary thinking, this feels like the best overall approach, one that aligns to my values and most respects her right to self-determine.

As always, this process of recording our philosophy-ing is living. Jes and I often start with a frame (a question), but then trust each other to explore with openness, curiosity and a desire to learn. We never know where we will end up, but always have fun along the way.

I hope you enjoy the conversation. And I trust it will spark something within you

P.S. Here are some of the questions we are exploring in this series:

• What do we actually mean by philosophy?

• What’s the value of philosophy in organisations?

• How is philosophy compared / contrasted (equivalency), relative to other organisational functions?

• How can philosophy help organisations interface with genuine uncertainty and complex challenges no organisation has ever faced?

• How can diverse ethical theories or lenses help inform decision making within organisations?

• How can philosophy help organisations more responsibly and effectively design, develop, and use AI (or not)?

• How can philosophy help us better understand the role of trust, and its importance, within organisations (and beyond)?

• Beyond profit, how can philosophy help an organisation define its telos? And how can defining this inform strategy and support culture?

• How can philosophy enhance an organisations’ capacity to identify and mitigate ‘consequential uncertainty’ (i.e. risk)?

• How can philosophy inform authentic progress in boardrooms (how they are comprised, how they collaborate, the ways in which they communicate etc.)?

• How can existentialist ideas about meaning, freedom and authenticity apply to ‘employee engagement’, motivation and combatting workplace alienation?

• How can a deeper understanding of epistemology improve an organisations approach to data and ‘evidence based’ decision making?

• How does one’s philosophy influence their leadership style, and how might this impact (or be impacted by) organisational culture?

• What philosophical questions should organisations be asking about the future of work and their role in ‘shaping it’?

• Plus so much more (ideally with your contribution, so please let us know what questions you’d like us to explore)