I decided to find "The Nature of Order" and do my own interpretation. After reading through the 15 principles I think Alexander accurately describes the flow of interactions. I feel like he had an intuitive connection with the energies and a mind that could fully comprehend the complexities involved.
However, I see what I think are two shortcomings.
First, he's letting the right brain lead the left brain. I call them subminds but we'll use Alexander's terminology and call them centers. One of the tenants in his principal of centers is that there should be an equally strong offsetting center to the desired center. There should be a balance of leading, a rolling leadership with adaptation for input from the the other, not a Master laying parameters for the Emissary to work within, regardless of which you choose as Master.
Second, and more important, he hasn't recognized the illusion of wholes.
Wholes are a cognitive construct, useful for making complex and complicated systems and processes easier to grasp mentally. But "Oneing" complexities into wholes is a reductionistic illusion. What Alexander is interpreting as Wholeness is nothing more than what he states elsewhere, centers in coherent resonance. When you, Bonnie selected the other bead it felt better because it matched your resonance. It didn't make you more Whole, it didn't connect you to a greater whole, it added a peripheral center to your collection of centers that you identify with as the constructed label "Bonnie".
I think that in order for us to evolve to the next stage we need to set aside the dichotomy of parts and wholes. Let's view parts as centers. And as Alexander has said view reality (also a false oneing) as collections of centers that form boundaries that live on a gradient, sometimes indistinct and highly permeable, other times sharp, clear, and closed off.
And we, as self-cognizant center systems, should put effort into learning the centers that shape us and adjusting the permeability of our boundaries.
I think that is just where he started from. But... by the time he gets to the fourth book, he way way out in a different universe. Good reflection. I find the 15 properties 1) what most people quote his for and 2) the least interesting of his work.
animal feeling into the original fractal nature of space!!! I experience the wholeness as, yes, I understand CA is talking about the structure of buildings and I see that, but (really "and") he is talking directly to the structure of my mind, same thing it scales in and out seamlessly, solves everything at once! It's the feeling of confirmation, but (really "and") space "tells" you the truth of "movement", or maybe like you and space are on the same page (fabric of the universe). tHaT fEeL WHeN tHerE iS No ILLusIoN oF SePArAtIoN AnD iTs TRIpPy As heCk.
I now see Bill Mollison of Permaculture as the Christopher Alexander of living centers of nature. Mr. Alexander’s concepts will now become the foundation of my community development and expansion of
BioRegionalism in my Snake River Valley along the Old Oregon Trail.
The center will organically develop on my property with a partially underground greenhouse (sun side above ground) and expand as our master gardener landscaper takes these humanistic approaches from my property to his near my Willow Tree Center and on to the Payette River which flows into the Snake on the way to Farewell Bend were the Oregon Trail split.
Some Pioneers following the Snake. Others headed into the higher elevations.
Thank you so much Bonnie for your work which is indeed providing living structures which have the potential to provide life fulfilling feelings into the very hearts of our existence.
Oh, P.S., the image that accompanies the preview of this piece. It’s been my desktop image for many years and has been an invaluable friend and guide in my new-found love of making decorative objects.
Amen and hallelujah. Your writing - in it’s intimately-personed poetry and poiesis - always feels so generatively companioning to my own ultimate concern and specificity of desire.
Was Alexander friends with Gendlin, I wonder? It seems like he would have to be.
… .. … The question of the person, of space, of wholeness, of creatively world-disclosive personing…. I know of none deeper or more costly to meaningfully live.
I walked through a “beautiful” master-planned community last night full of $1-3M “old-fashioned” houses and “community” gardens and literally cried over the vast expanse of soullessness and how much it actually cost. (What it cost was thirty pieces of silver.)
My friend, witnessing my distress but not understanding, asked, “What would it cost to build the REAL thing?” I responded, “It couldn’t be built. It could only be grown through a responsive relationship with the aliveness of space. And it would cost the widow’s mite.”
Sounds like this latest class will be amazing grace. I’m definitely interested. Thanks, again, always, for being a voice crying in the wilderness.
Thank you for the images and invitation to see centers of wholeness. This gives language to my experience of looking out the window of my 4th floor apartment at the upper branches of an enormous tree in my daily 'Still Hunting' practice. This also puts more flesh on the idea of becoming a human who feels to other humans like encountering Nature.
A question I'll be curious about in the course is understanding Alexander's paradoxical joining of personal and universal, but I already love the way that it feels.
I also love the idea that a feeling is a fact!
And finally, the idea of objects as "mirrors of the self" - and that the mirrors are clearer when there is more 'life' in the object - enhances this idea of developing one's self by connecting with the world rather than doing endless "inner work."
Oh! So glad that someone among the current sparkling online literati discovers Christopher Alexander! He’s been part of my cultural lineage for many decades, informing my thinking & perceiving deeply & surely ( just as do others that are ignored by current trail blazers - James Gibson’s ecological approach to perception, Theodore Roszak, Paul Shepard, …ah, one could go on & on…but it’s all good! Bravo Bonnie!
I am soooo old in that lineage, I have his signatures on the first editions of the Nature of Order Books! And I started teaching him online in my Magellan Courses over a decade ago! Welcome aboard..
I decided to find "The Nature of Order" and do my own interpretation. After reading through the 15 principles I think Alexander accurately describes the flow of interactions. I feel like he had an intuitive connection with the energies and a mind that could fully comprehend the complexities involved.
However, I see what I think are two shortcomings.
First, he's letting the right brain lead the left brain. I call them subminds but we'll use Alexander's terminology and call them centers. One of the tenants in his principal of centers is that there should be an equally strong offsetting center to the desired center. There should be a balance of leading, a rolling leadership with adaptation for input from the the other, not a Master laying parameters for the Emissary to work within, regardless of which you choose as Master.
Second, and more important, he hasn't recognized the illusion of wholes.
Wholes are a cognitive construct, useful for making complex and complicated systems and processes easier to grasp mentally. But "Oneing" complexities into wholes is a reductionistic illusion. What Alexander is interpreting as Wholeness is nothing more than what he states elsewhere, centers in coherent resonance. When you, Bonnie selected the other bead it felt better because it matched your resonance. It didn't make you more Whole, it didn't connect you to a greater whole, it added a peripheral center to your collection of centers that you identify with as the constructed label "Bonnie".
I think that in order for us to evolve to the next stage we need to set aside the dichotomy of parts and wholes. Let's view parts as centers. And as Alexander has said view reality (also a false oneing) as collections of centers that form boundaries that live on a gradient, sometimes indistinct and highly permeable, other times sharp, clear, and closed off.
And we, as self-cognizant center systems, should put effort into learning the centers that shape us and adjusting the permeability of our boundaries.
I think that is just where he started from. But... by the time he gets to the fourth book, he way way out in a different universe. Good reflection. I find the 15 properties 1) what most people quote his for and 2) the least interesting of his work.
I plan on reading the rest but it will take a long time. Work requires eyes on and I haven't found an audio version yet.
animal feeling into the original fractal nature of space!!! I experience the wholeness as, yes, I understand CA is talking about the structure of buildings and I see that, but (really "and") he is talking directly to the structure of my mind, same thing it scales in and out seamlessly, solves everything at once! It's the feeling of confirmation, but (really "and") space "tells" you the truth of "movement", or maybe like you and space are on the same page (fabric of the universe). tHaT fEeL WHeN tHerE iS No ILLusIoN oF SePArAtIoN AnD iTs TRIpPy As heCk.
Also! "Still-Hunting"!!!! I SEE I SEE omg mind-blowing (liberating)!!!
Magnificent
I now see Bill Mollison of Permaculture as the Christopher Alexander of living centers of nature. Mr. Alexander’s concepts will now become the foundation of my community development and expansion of
BioRegionalism in my Snake River Valley along the Old Oregon Trail.
The center will organically develop on my property with a partially underground greenhouse (sun side above ground) and expand as our master gardener landscaper takes these humanistic approaches from my property to his near my Willow Tree Center and on to the Payette River which flows into the Snake on the way to Farewell Bend were the Oregon Trail split.
Some Pioneers following the Snake. Others headed into the higher elevations.
Thank you so much Bonnie for your work which is indeed providing living structures which have the potential to provide life fulfilling feelings into the very hearts of our existence.
Absolutely!
Oh, P.S., the image that accompanies the preview of this piece. It’s been my desktop image for many years and has been an invaluable friend and guide in my new-found love of making decorative objects.
Amen and hallelujah. Your writing - in it’s intimately-personed poetry and poiesis - always feels so generatively companioning to my own ultimate concern and specificity of desire.
Was Alexander friends with Gendlin, I wonder? It seems like he would have to be.
… .. … The question of the person, of space, of wholeness, of creatively world-disclosive personing…. I know of none deeper or more costly to meaningfully live.
I walked through a “beautiful” master-planned community last night full of $1-3M “old-fashioned” houses and “community” gardens and literally cried over the vast expanse of soullessness and how much it actually cost. (What it cost was thirty pieces of silver.)
My friend, witnessing my distress but not understanding, asked, “What would it cost to build the REAL thing?” I responded, “It couldn’t be built. It could only be grown through a responsive relationship with the aliveness of space. And it would cost the widow’s mite.”
Sounds like this latest class will be amazing grace. I’m definitely interested. Thanks, again, always, for being a voice crying in the wilderness.
Beautiful.
Thank you for the images and invitation to see centers of wholeness. This gives language to my experience of looking out the window of my 4th floor apartment at the upper branches of an enormous tree in my daily 'Still Hunting' practice. This also puts more flesh on the idea of becoming a human who feels to other humans like encountering Nature.
A question I'll be curious about in the course is understanding Alexander's paradoxical joining of personal and universal, but I already love the way that it feels.
I also love the idea that a feeling is a fact!
And finally, the idea of objects as "mirrors of the self" - and that the mirrors are clearer when there is more 'life' in the object - enhances this idea of developing one's self by connecting with the world rather than doing endless "inner work."
Looking forward to class!
Oh! So glad that someone among the current sparkling online literati discovers Christopher Alexander! He’s been part of my cultural lineage for many decades, informing my thinking & perceiving deeply & surely ( just as do others that are ignored by current trail blazers - James Gibson’s ecological approach to perception, Theodore Roszak, Paul Shepard, …ah, one could go on & on…but it’s all good! Bravo Bonnie!
I am soooo old in that lineage, I have his signatures on the first editions of the Nature of Order Books! And I started teaching him online in my Magellan Courses over a decade ago! Welcome aboard..
https://biffnetdotorg.wordpress.com/previous-courses/christopher-alexander-the-luminous-ground/