On Intuitive Understanding
You’re right to note that “the fish does not know the water it is swimming in.” I meant as much when I said “The living memory of people alive today is a few generations at most… so the tragedy is that we don’t remember there ever having existed a world which was not top-down controlled.”
I’m with you. I’m not saying that intuitive understanding is always right, and yes, we are normalized to trauma, poison, abuse, and distraction.
But let’s say you want to start this process of correcting the intuition, so that it more closely serves the benefit of the individual. Where do you start? What faculties, if any, do you trust in the individual to be accurate and true?
In the Pink Floyd song “Wish You Were Here” these themes are explored:
Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
In my view, this is a song about propaganda and narrative, and how deeply distorted a person’s perspective can become. And the desire to reconnect through it all.
I’m not saying that we can trust 100% our own perceptions and intuitions or those of others. But I am expressing confidence that it is not all lost. I believe, and I know it to be true from my experience so far, that if I look for it within any individual I can find aspects of them that are tuned into truth that I myself recognize. Common ground where we feel and see that truth together. And that must be the foundation that we build upon in education, and in healing our communities.
And also: for a framework to have value, it must be implementable with the resources and people at hand.
On Truth
De Bono distinguished between “rock logic” and “water logic.”
Water logic sounds like it bears some traits of non-dualistic thinking.
The key insight is that attachment to a particular viewpoint, idea, or mental map is unwise. Better to hold a particular “truth” and then try to continuously challenge and change it with better information.
We agree upon this.
in a traumatized population with dysregulated nervous systems, truth itself becomes threatening.
Yes.
This is why the work of governance reform and the work of healing cannot be separated. You cannot build a truth-telling culture among people whose nervous systems experience truth as existential threat.
Yes and no. A person is not “one unit of truthiness” which is either correct or incorrect. We hold constellations of beliefs and values. What is your entry point? What are the conditions which are present now, which you will accept as sufficient to begin your work?
I’m not challenging your objective or even necessarily your mental framework. Both you and I have turned this predicament around in our heads many times, looking for the entry point. And that’s what I’m looking for here. For me, the golden rule is “work on what is within your power to do”. Which includes “work with those who are willing to receive.” And gives me pause any time I am finding myself in a story of victimhood, or in any way justifying a forceful approach with others.
On Virtue, Strength, and Goodness
This is far too large a subject to address succinctly
Yes. 
Thank you for recognizing that, but also recognizing the importance of these questions.
sorry, this interface limits me to two links in a post
I increased the limit to 10. This is a setting for new users to prevent spam.
I outline core qualities: holding space (witnessing without judgment), wisdom (determining pathways while weighing different truths in full context), self-discipline (acting in alignment with core values even when you don’t feel like it), strength of character (being unshakable without being rigid), and directness (knowing one’s mind and clearly revealing it).
Wonderful! And yes, I agree, these all must be cultivated and demonstrated, not merely repeated by rote.
On the Tournament Mechanism and “Wise Followers”
The tournament is the environment. Extended small-group interaction over months creates conditions where certain qualities simply cannot be faked, regardless of whether observers can articulate what they’re selecting for.
Ok. Can you be more specific by what you mean by this? What is the circumstance and the selection process by which this occurs? If there are specifics that have been presented here they have escaped my notice.
In contrast, I propose that organizations of smaller granularity are the context in which merit of leadership should be proven. This is not undefined because the forms of these organizations are familiar to all of the adults within our society (presumably anyone reading this). The task is to experiment with new modes of stewardship, operation, unifying purpose, and law. And to prove our philosophies by result, which can be measured by:
- economic viability
- resilience to market & supply line shocks
- self realization journey of members/participants (you could use VALS survey for instance)
- impacts on local community
- impacts on customers/beneficiaries
And to define the terms I just used:
- Stewardship - management of resources
- Operation - the activities of the organization
- Unifying Purpose - the vision, mission, and purpose, and granular timely goals
- Law - the agreements, the roles and responsibilities, how we make decisions
This is just a way of slicing down the context of an organization such that the tangible “ways of being” within each category can be examined, experimented with and evolved.
There are some commonalities in this approach with the multi-stakeholder approach proposed by the World Economic Forum (moving beyond bottom-line accounting). But I definitely see the WEF as the snake in the garden, and I don’t trust them at all to define the terms, the narrative, or the regulatory structure in which we will operate.
The person who is certain they can spot the narcissist is often the least equipped to do so—their certainty itself is the tell.
So what would you have us do? How should we approach bolstering the individual’s discernment? My concern is that I find it easy to take a framing like you’ve proposed here and use it to undermine an individual’s self confidence and to gaslight them into believing that they’re not really being abused at all. I feel that it’s fundamental, and it’s so important, that we should always be approaching “education” and the process of “helping others” by building up their self esteem, and their confidence in their ability to make decisions.
In fact there’s a whole approach to conflict resolution based around this. It’s called Transformative Mediation.
On Embodiment and Proof of Concept
[The tournament] creates its own proving ground from scratch. Note the difference between hiring based on résumés (which can be fabricated, padded, or falsified) versus hiring based on a months-long working trial where the candidate collaborates with peers on real problems while being continuously assessed.
I don’t feel like it’s realistic to expect that people will devote this kind of time and effort to a synthetic environment. In a way, there is a precedent of counter example (to my statement) within the entire academic world, where lessons and exercises are arbitrary, and not connected with “building a business”, “doing new science” or “practical skills”. While yes, humanity has been doing this for many generations now, I would say grudgingly, and only by force and lack of alternatives, and almost universally people agree with the statement “There has to be a better way.” Embodied learning is what I propose as an answer to that.
Here’s an example from Phoenix Arizona, where I used to live. Generation Tech Support was founded by Jr. high and high school students under the guidance of Debbie, a woman I’ve met and have some mutual friendships with. They’ve been operating for years now autonomously under student leadership. Students get to experience all aspects of running a business, and their knowledge is very practical and real, because if it weren’t the business would fail. Now, if we wanted to measure their outcomes in the other categories I mentioned, that could be done through surveys. And the suitability of leadership arising from this organization could be considered in context of what was achieved and how they operated and worked with others.
Another fantastic example is Randy Pausch, who offered a “Creating Virtual Worlds” course at Carnegie Mellon. This is a man who touched many lives. By creating a program of embodied learning, he had employers competing to hire his students before they graduated. Because it’s far more meaningful to an employer to ask “What are you capable of?” than to ask “What do you know?” Notably a major portion of the students grades came from the peers within their teams - people had to enjoy working with you in order to achieve the best grade.
Contemporary wisdom research (Sternberg, Baltes, Ardelt) provides empirically-grounded markers. These are the integration of cognitive depth, reflective self-examination, and compassion, alongside the capacity to balance competing interests towards a common good. The tournament’s extended observation allows these qualities to emerge—and, crucially, reveals the five fallacies of foolishness (egocentrism, false omniscience, omnipotence, invulnerability, unrealistic optimism) that disqualify candidates.
Ok, this is interesting and specific. More of a mental model starts to arise in me, hearing this.
Your village-scale model and the tournament process actually shares this insight. Both recognize that character reveals itself through relationship over time, not through performance in artificial contexts. The difference is scope. Villages surface local wisdom through organic community life. The tournament attempts to surface wisdom at scales too large for everyone to know everyone personally.
Ok, if I shift my framing to a “game”, or a set of games specifically designed to demonstrate these qualities and have them arise in obvious ways in the participants, then I can see something that starts to excite me. I have in the past used the game Go in the interview process at my company, because in the space of an hour, I was able to see:
- How the individual encounters a complex but unknown arena
- How they respond to feedback and guidance
- How they respond to perceived losses and setbacks
- Whether the person can remain in a state of curiosity
This is a game that in many ways produces a similar set of emotions and contexts to the work of programming itself. And by simply playing and observing, I can see things that no verbal interview would tell me.
Another thing that arises for me: this process doesn’t have to take place slowly. You could on a dedicated Saturday have a tournament, and if you were observing the process with these principles in mind, get a lot of information from it about who to promote and in what ways. “In what ways” is important, because I believe you would identify different tracks for different types of competency, to play a variety of roles which are all needed for a successful organization.
Or even your thought of a several months long tournament, I imagine would actually happen in the off hours, on the weekends. It wouldn’t be a full time job to attend the tournaments and participate in the process. Although it might become a full time job to practice, study, and do well in the tournaments.
There is a book called “Gamestorming” which I have used in a professional setting, and also within what I call “Idea Labs”. This gives some great building blocks which I believe could be used to construct games that would be useful for your intentions. I intend to use tools like this in supporting a cadre of educators in my most recent iteration.
I’m also imagining Magic: The Gathering tournaments (sans the poor hygiene) in terms of the competition brackets. Herman Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game” also comes to mind - a theoretical game within his novel that grew to encompass all forms of human knowledge, where the game had practical understanding and application within the real world. Hesse left the exact details of the game and its mode of application a bit vague - “magic” was invoked. But perhaps there’s a sense in which this can be made real?
On the Double Helix
Yes. Nothing further to add.
What this means practically
What it doesn’t do—and what I don’t think it can do by replication alone—is aggregate local wisdom into governance capable of coordinating at larger scales. At some point, villages need to federate. Decisions need to be made that affect multiple communities. Resources need to be allocated across regions. The question isn’t whether larger-scale coordination will happen—it’s whether that coordination will be captured by the forces that have captured everything else, or whether it will emerge from genuine wisdom surfaced through rigorous selection.
Aggregation, federation, and governance systems have not escaped my attention. My original purpose in building The County Fence was to allow for greater connection and awareness within Delta County, so that we could swing the Land Use Code issue to something more representative of the will and interests of the people at large. That hasn’t gone away. I’m just continually looking for “the entry point” that allows me to get the engine running. In order for the County Fence to have sustainable growth, we need at least 1 value loop which:
- meets people where they are at now, satisfying a need or desire they have
- allows them to accomplish and fulfill that need
- generates additional traffic, buzz, and signups as a result
Given 1 value loop, we can then add another and another. At some point we will pass a threshold where it will be “the place to be”.
One of the great shortfalls of our impulse-driven, give-me-the-headline culture is that people judge the things they see by this single instant in time. And the growth journey of an organization (or a person) cannot be understood within the confines of a headline. I feel a bit frustrated sometimes, like people are pointing out “your tree doesn’t have any apples on it”. Is it really necessary for me to point out that it needs sunlight, water, soil, and time? NO, WE DEMAND APPLES NOW. I’m not saying you specifically Michael, but it feels like a theme for me this year. I don’t know quite how to get out of it except to come to a greater sense of patience myself.
But back to present focus: My current theory for this value loop is the education process: that we can take a set of people who already have ambitions to offer education curriculum, or who are already doing it, and we can offer them a community and resources that would help them evolve their offering, reach new audiences, and thrive financially from following the call within themselves. And if we can coalesce an active core that’s doing this, that might give sufficient reason for me to print and distribute The Fence, promote it, and take it further.
Another reason for having a group of people: I find it exhausting an unrewarding to do the work on my own. To wear all the hats. To convince myself on a daily basis that I’m doing the right thing and to keep going, when inherently I am a social creature. I wasn’t meant to operate in a vacuum, without a tribe to reflect with, strive with, and celebrate with. I need my tribe. I’m putting out the call for that.
Conclusions
Ok, I think there has been some coming together in this exchange. When I see your tournament as a “game” to be played, that seems like something that’s definable, and we have some criteria on the deck for evaluating what a “good game” will be.
I think that the Idea Labs and some of the other workshops I intend to offer in context of supporting the educators share some qualities with the tournament that you’re proposing. Although my angle is more as an “incubator for organizations” and your angle is as a “proving grounds for leadership”. There is probably a fair amount of synergy between these two goals. Worth exploring.
Would you be interested in being a part of the first cohort? You can use this environment as a place to develop your ideas, get feedback, get participation from others. The frameworks I’m offering, the exercises, the perspectives - these are all offerings, without any sense of force. They’re tools for you to use if you like them and put down if not. Everyone in the program will retain their creative direction and freedom to develop as they see fit.
The first step would be to get in a room together and discuss what we’d all like to create, and what kind of support and collaboration that will require.
How does that sound? Anything else you’d like to share?