[OSList] Where angels fear to tread

Tue Nov 16 16:27:45 PST 2021

From what I can glean in Bateson’s article and what I have heard about Warm Data, what happens does sound parallel to what occurs when people meet in Open Space.

I find her writing frustrating. But when one is attempting to give language to new ideas, it’s rough. The effort falls into a pattern she discusses: our tendency to want to relate to the ideas through habitual lenses. Sometimes more and different words can help. More often, it takes an embodied experience. Perhaps a Warm Data Lab?

I find her insight that we need a word for life coalescing towards vitality in unseen ways intriguing. By naming it, I hope it will become more seen. Sounds like something we want to notice and grow.

Thanks for sending the article Jeff.

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> On Nov 16, 2021, at 2:48 PM, Chris Corrigan via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for sharing this Jeff. I have known about Nora's work for sometime and although I don't fully understand it yet I think what I do know of it, it's great.). 
> 
> WHy does she choose the words she chooses? I think because this is how she has come to an understanding about the simple truths that Warm Data works with. God know we have some pretty funny language amongst us all to explain things like "let people look after things they care about."  But, Jeff, the first piece you posted of hers makes a lot of sense to me and is a concise description of Warm Data process, and is very helpful to me having an "aha" about it. 
> 
> Chris
> 
> On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 1:37 PM Jeff Aitken via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org <mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>> wrote:
> Also I note that Nora is still very early in the practice of a methodology that she invented (I think.) 
> 
> Maybe it's like the first five-ten years of OST as folks were figuring out what the hell this is all about... : )
> 
> And from the lens of an artist and family therapy researcher whose father was Gregory Bateson. That makes sense to me...
> 
> Warmly
> Jeff 
> 
> On Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 1:21 PM Jeff Aitken <r.jeff.aitken at gmail.com <mailto:r.jeff.aitken at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Hi Birgitt. My first guess is that it serves practitioners to be simple, while it serves systems scientists to be complicated or complex. 
> 
> They are writing about living systems at all scales and making very subtle distinctions. 
> 
> It may serve us practitioners to have some appreciation for the latter. "Your mileage may vary" tho, as a friend says! 
> 
> Warmly
> Jeff
> 
> On Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 1:10 PM Birgitt Williams <birgittwilliams at gmail.com <mailto:birgittwilliams at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Jeff..I don't understand why it serves to be so complicated? Why not simply refer to seen and unseen?
> 
> Birgitt 
> 
> On Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 3:57 PM Jeff Aitken via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org <mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>> wrote:
> One more email - I was amiss to mention this new theory by Nora, without defining the word she is introducing, and she finds occurring in Warm Data Lab and I think is true in OST too. 
> 
> It is "a way to describe a life giving process, by which vitality, healing, and creativity come into being by the coalescence of multiple unseen factors."
> "Aphanipoiesis combines two words from ancient Greek to describe this way in which life coalesces toward vitality in unseen ways. (Aphanis comes from a Greek root meaning obscured, unseen, unnoticed; poiesis is from one meaning to bring forth, to make.)"
> 
> Yes it's an academic term, and is presented at a systems science conference and in a journal article. 
> 
> Useful for practitioners to think about and to notice in our work? That's my question for the oslist.
> 
> It reminds me of Harrison's definition of "peace" in The Practice of Peace. With an emphasis on the unseen, internal, very subtle shifts that take place that are NOT reflected in proceedings and action plans.
> 
> Warmly, Jeff.
> 
> Reference:
> 
> Bateson, N.,(2021). Aphanipoiesis. In Journal of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the ISSS, Virtual (Vol. 1, №1) — under review.
> 
> 
> 
> This work was presented at the Annual Biosemiotics Conference June 2021, the Annual Conference of the International Society of Systems Sciences July 2021, and the Annual conference of the Institute of General Semantics September 2021.
> 
> 
> On Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 11:16 PM Jeff Aitken <r.jeff.aitken at gmail.com <mailto:r.jeff.aitken at gmail.com>> wrote:
> As a refresher or quick intro to the process, Warm Data Lab starts with a group of folks and a theme question. But the topics of conversation are chosen in advance by sponsor and facilitator. Each breakout table (or area) gets a topic written on a sign: which names a context from which to address the theme question. 
> 
> So if the theme is drug abuse, the chosen wide variety of contexts might be: education, prisons, public health, initiation, addiction, pharmaceuticals, parenting, ceremony, etc. People go to the breakouts of their choice and stay or move as they wish. The law of mobility is used. A closing circle might end the event after some number of hours. 
> 
> It has some qualities of OST and World Cafe while being different. 
> 
> I've only been in one WDL so other folks might improve my description.
> 
> Jeff
> 
> On Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 7:22 PM Jeff Aitken <r.jeff.aitken at gmail.com <mailto:r.jeff.aitken at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Where does systemic change take place? I am reflecting on earlier posts about the Warm Data Lab and comparing - contrasting this work with other hosted conversation processes like OST.
> 
> What seems different - please correct this if it's wrong - is the level of attention paid to the complex ways in which WDL might help bring about change. Looking well beyond action plans and carefully harvested proceedings etc.
> 
> This may be a fruitful area of inquiry for OST folks. (The subject line here is from a reference in a book by Nora Bateson's late father Gregory.)
> 
> Nora Bateson just shared a video and long essay, coming out prior to her essay being published soon in a journal. She is introducing a new term "aphanipoiesis" to the conversation of systemic transformation.
> 
> The essay is here: https://norabateson.medium.com/aphanipoiesis-96d8aed927bc <https://norabateson.medium.com/aphanipoiesis-96d8aed927bc>
> 
> Some teaser paragraphs for us. Can this also be said about OST, but we just don't??
> "Rewilding the Interior
> 
> 
> In the words of the Warm Data hosting theory, we tend the “about” so that what is re-configured is in the “within.” It does not really matter what people talk “about” in a Warm Data Lab. There is nothing to capture at that level. What matters is the way the participants are internally sewing together the different conversations and contexts. On a transcript this information is inaccessible.
> 
> "In the Warm Data processes, communication in explicit form is not held to be the communication of interest. That level of conversation is there as a skeleton, onto which the stories not told reshape the person who did not tell them, the alterations in tone, the re-tilted perception is given free rein to rub memories and stories against each other. One comment that comes up repeatedly is, “Your story changed my story.” Through this “side-by-side-ing,” stories told change stories almost told, and their bearers are able to reshape their impressions in ways that are untamed. By careful tending of the “about” and “within,” the rich world of memory and story re-wilds.
> 
> 
> "The gaps are where the hope of systemic transformation is waiting. In the Warm Data processes, participants are given a structure to re-stitch, to re-wild, to begin a new abductive process into these gaps. Again, by placing the contexts of life side-by-side in new configurations, the aphanipoietic processes are given room, without conscious purpose or goals or defined outcomes, without scripts or roles or trends — to allow the tender new beginnings of another abductive description to form mutually.
> 
> "Through this work, I have found I needed this term to embark on a deeper study of the importance of aphanipoiesis. The changes I witness occurring in the Warm Data processes are completely unpredictable and profound. They suggest ever more vividly that there is a real, if unseen, mingling of the body, culture, education, family — and a whole batch of transcontextual experience that is guiding all other actions. It is to this change that I have devoted my efforts toward systemic transformation."
> 
> Warmly,
> Jeff
> Yelamu / San Francisco
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
>   
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> CHRIS CORRIGAN
> Facilitation - Training - Process Design - Strategy 
> Complexity - Art of Hosting
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