Essay Series
Essays grouped by series — each exploring a theme across multiple parts.
The order and chaos of relationships
A path from relational order to chaos
A guide to various types of relational order leading to the edge of chaos.
Relational chaos, death, & progress
A futile attempt to describe the expressive, unstructured world of relational chaos.
Relational order is the foundation of any group
An exploration of the social norms and power structures that order our relationships.
The Chaos & Order of Creative Work
Creative work is like fighting a dragon up a hill
Creative work as the bridge between chaos and order. This essay we'll explore the uphill part of "figuring it out."
The future operates in a different kind of time
An exploration of the futility of attempting to put the future on a schedule along with an ancient anecdote to our modern view of time.
The past is never done
An ancient and more humane way of looking at what's already "done."
The rocky downhill slope of creative work
An exploration of the less dramatic - but every bit as essential - second half of creative work: the part that feels the most like "work."
Personality maps
The war & harmony between the relational & conceptual worlds
Mimetic patterns form our Identity & relationships
Our identity and worldview are shaped more by others than ourselves.
Concepts transform our identity by reshaping our relationship with ourself
While much of our self-concept forms from mimetic connections with others, the most transformative connections come from connecting profound concepts to our relationship to ourselves.
The strange & wonderful relational world
How the strange and wonderful relational world generates human progress, art, and moves in harmony or war with its conceptual roots.
How to see when language fails
How to turn conflict into progress
In this essay, we climb a three rung ladder of conflict: from our ugly I.) Default Combat to the rare II.) Win-Win Sparring and finally to rarest, III.) Innovative Synthesis.
How we miss the forest for the trees & the trees for the forest
Charged words like "violence" and "racism" reveal a gap in our language. In this essay, we'll explore ways to bridge a Grand Canyon-sized chasm between perspectives that few see and almost everyone stumbles into.
The language gap between the heart and the head
In this essay, we'll explore a hazardous gap in our language that's only grown wider with the increasing power of the disembodied written word.
The language of the conceptual world
How to tend to our invisible operating system
The hidden concepts in our mind – knowledge, systems, and ideologies – empower everything we live out in real world relationships. In this essay, we'll explore how to vertically evolve our hidden OS.
The language of the conceptual world
A dive below the surface to explore the mysterious, hidden conceptual world.
Fieldnotes
Mark the level of conversation you want to have
Conversations are more enjoyable, productive, and less confusing when we can picture what level talking from: galaxy, forest, or the trees.
The My Work Myth
Great creative work is fundamentally collaborative and evolving not individual or static.
The problem with the news
The "news" is a powerful, narrative pattern that brings seemingly chaotic events into our narrative order. But how much should we pay attention to it?
Why most meetings are a waste of time
In this field note, we'll apply a few ideas from the Chaos Map to sketch a clearer picture for where meetings fit and don't fit in creative, collaborative work.
Books
When order moves to chaos
Who to listen to when order moves to chaos
When order suddenly moves to chaos, our social fabric and systems formed over generations strain and break. Worse, we lack reliable patterns to employ as we attempt to repair the wrecked order we know and love.
The tyranny of order in decline
How order fails even in good times, why we need sacrificial leaders, and what makes order tyrannical.
When the chaff burns away
What survives and thrives when the old order collapses?