the letterbox protocol

Just spoke to Sofia regarding Chris. Chris is the guy who funded me to live in london in summer 2007. He's a genius, however his social interaction with people is so bad it's scary. Which means, his genius is not being correctly and usefully influencing the current world flows as much as it should. Sofia was burned by him, and she's super patient and tried for years. My solution has been heard but has not been acted on. It's a sore point, because there is danger that she will enter into engagement with him, and this will lead to the same dynamics as before.

With this in mind, Sofia suggested we talk about the problem using the Letterbox Protocol. From Confluence Consultancy:

"Having done this with my brother and with Sofia to my benefit and theirs, it is something I would like to encourage especially with people who are ahead of themselves. The protocol consists of changing how we speak in a simple way, specifically, each person says one sentence only.

"The intention at the end of the sentence is to invite the other to continue. This is the default state. A person is not allowed to continue unless the other comprehends, is following, is ready, and enables one to say the next sentence.

"The practice of this means that speaking is divorced from the speaker. Because we are sophisticated and we know about multiple perspectives, we tend to fall into the trap of our real-time truth that we have different perspectives. The objective is to acknowledge and practice the truth that we are talking at a deeper level than perspective. Hence, it does not matter who actually is talking. The emphasis is not on will, on grabbing attention, on being entertaining, nor sparkling with some wit, or bringing to bear some fact, etc. It is based on simple sharing. Also, little feedback loops like, dis/agreement, are jettisoned in the same way individually they are jettisoned for the sake of individual personal fluency. Also consider bids to say more than one statement which requires consensus again.

"This is relatively easy with two people, and requires greater practice with more than two. If people become practiced at this, then there is a chance that the speed might increase, where a collective of ten speak as if they are one."

It worked! We also included a time limit of 20 mins. Good engagement. Although a tricky subject, the protocol prevents a collapse into standard behaviours and social dynamics. Sofia and I talked about this tricky subject well, and we both felt good at the end of it, even though there is a confrontation right at the heart of it. Tav automated the process for Twitter, but his server is not up and running at the mo. However, even when it does, what people need is the real-world experience of it before it is transposed into the virtual world.

A similar dynamic happened when Dougald located various disorders of communication in me, and when I asked for engagement in a polite way, we effected something like the Letterbox Protocol. He is very eloquent, and produced some excellent and accurate descriptions as well as demonstrating lightness of attention. This has a tendency to run on, which makes listening and addressing specific points tricky. I believe by introducing the invitational ethic after every sentence, I do believe he will absolutely shine.

This is a protocol to improve listening, and thereby following, and thereby the emergence of appropriate leadership, that is, to truth. It helps us confront what needs to be confronted, well. It's a buddhist protocol, I think.

dangerous insights

So, having got the usual feedback from people, who are informed by their local level success, empowered enough to feel they can give advice, the voice that I represent is not heard. I am certain that my experience with kids is real. They are the lesson, and I am happy to relate this back to the current, misguided adults in the complex world we have made for ourselves, and the total confusion of information, values, groups, politics, economics, and such silliness.

The chances are, you as a reader, are an adult, and so there is going to be ego stuff going on, with lots of complex inter-reflections of what you think about the world, people, me, etc. So, let's try to cut through that with a simple thought... experiment. I saw this picture in a book I am reading called Philosophy of Mathematics, given to me by the genius Luke. (For the attentive, the subtitle is, A contemporary introduction to the world of proofs and pictures.) Give yourself a moment to see if you can relate it to Pythagoras Theory. It's surprisingly simple. The consequence of this insight, or realisation, is quite significant. At least, it was for me :)

This is actually the special case which leads to the general case which leads to the pythagoras theorem. It is based on a simple observation. The sum of the two smaller triangles add up to the area of the large triangle. That is, the areas of the two smaller areas equal the area of the large area. c^2 = a^2 + b^2. Why have I never spotted this observation before? Take your time with it.

This simple observation startled me when I came across it. And it floated around my head this morning. I then let myself think of the process iterative within the smaller triangles, and this leads to a fractal representation of the areas. Interestingly, this only happened when the usual pythagoras theorem demonstration, with squares on the outside edges of the large triangle, was internalised or folded on the inside edges of the largest triangle. It's something about infinite and bounded at the same time.

This led me to thinking about a money system which is fractional. That is, when we transact money, or perhaps a pecu, it is a fractional amount of the whole. Imagine that! When you transact, you are playing with a tiny fraction of the whole. Being part of the whole. And this only makes sense, if the whole is stable. That is, it is not about making money, because it is a closed system. If money is continued to be made, that's like the squares on the triangles, it is growing. That's what's happening at the edges of our money system, since we have different denominations, and trading of currencies causes this... inflation, for lack of a better term or perhaps as insight...

Anyhow, this single thought also led to an insight into hierarchies and cutting out the middle man, which happens to be in 2020worldpeace. Most people have begun to understand how much middle management bung things up. Policy makers are trying to encourage bottom-up growth. I think I have a solution which I presented in an earlier post somewhere. And I suddenly realised that my experience with tav, sofia, mamading, and then with dougald,vinay and then with lloyd and gary, was that there was a similar bunging up at the horizontal level. That is, in the same way information and decisions and power and money are absorbed within the hierarchical alignment, so it is lost in distributed networks. I have been focussing on the formation of groups, those that are not permeable as it were, don't have a time-frame, are not open, don't have api's as it were, are too discrete, usually seeded around an ego. Lloyd's appears to be different. Which is why it was such a shock to have the low quality of engagement I had with him yesterday. Shocking. Luckily, it got better, but I had to work at it, which shouldn't have to happen. It should be effortless.

The Genius Card.

So, the insight is, just walk into eg Nesta and saying I am a genius, preferably with someone else. Just like with advertising, to go straight to the top, to speak to the decision maker, cut out the local noise and go straight to those who hold the money, writing the policy, the microphones, and challenge them. The main problem I have been facing is not that my insights and offerings have been challenges, they just have not been engaged. Why not? Because they are gordian knot solutions. They use elements which exist at levels most people aren't playing with. It's not the same level of thinking, and doing. Hence, it is below the radar, as it were. And there's a lot of confusion out there.

Eg, the connection between buddhism and maths is a good one, but only if people take a look. Most people I experience want to argue with it before looking. Its like those feeling experiments I did with kids... the one where you put objects in a closed box and they have to put their hands in and describe what they feel, the number of corners, edges, etc. Some kids are frightened at first by the mystery, but all kids overcome their fear once one or two actually are brave enough to try. Same with the quality of ideas I have. eg 2020worldpeace. Truly a fightening unknown which my friends and family were so scared by... poor them :D I didn't realise they were so threatened by it. Well, similarly with people wrt buddhism and maths. Or, with the ideas of non-groupness, and the whole notion of not knowing. Tango, tai chi. It's all the same. It's about exploring the unknown. And it is precisely this that needs to be done. Together.

Yesterday was like a double-grind. I went back into myself, got more out of the pythagoras kernal, and coming out with speed :)

So, what does this mean?

The danger of this insight is the danger that I see in Tav, Vinay, Gary, Nick, the ego-problem. Will, as a function of belief, and how it becomes a leadership quality. It is good at a certain level of scale, if they are working well together. They will, at some point, it is hoped, but they do not align easily together. Ego is a problem. I'd like to see Vinay and Gary engage and see how that actually happens in presence, which would confirm something about leading and following.

The danger, is the same danger people see in Truth By David, or I Am The Answer, a more recent thing which scares a few people. It could so easily be misunderstood as ego, as arrogance, an accusation leveled at me as a kid a lot. I have been trained, I can see that. So, to allay people's fears, I shall be stepping back from all this. That is, I give these things, these thoughts, and then I step away. That is, whatever happens over the next two months (maybe 2 years... not sure about this, depends on the level of success I guess), I am going to walk away. It means I am not competing with what people are doing, I am not threatening their jobs, I am not taking away any lime-light from them. It's like a social death. It's the equivalent of disappearing into a monastery. I shall not grow in ego because I am extracting myself from the social scene.

Means I can play the Genius Card, for a little while, with a use-by-date, as it were :)