Trophic Syntheos is intended to prompt systems design dialogue.
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“…the most obvious important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” - David Foster Wallace
Trophic Syntheos is a meandering thought of systems wholeness, intergrations and expansions.
Trophic is derived from Ancient Greek trophikos, "pertaining to food or nourishment. Syntheos is also from the Greeks: syn- for with or creating with; theos referring to god. Syntheism is a kind of religion just as Buddhism is a kind of religion. Kind of, but not at all. These are traditions of practice, experience and inquiry into the felt moment. Spiritual naturalism is said to be America’s version of Syntheism, however the whole movement is somewhat small.
Trophic syntheos to me evokes a deep connecting with, within and as the living mystery surrounding us. A connecting; an intuition; a resonance. Would you say that trophic syntheos must be something we must trust as being true. It’s far too grand to hold and hug. It’s a hyperobject, just like polystyrene or anthropocentric climate heating. Trophic syntheos is an ambition, a dream and a possibility of practice. Trophic syntheos is an idea hiding in liminal corners of our collective psyche. The overwhelmingly massive hyperobjects are distributed across time and space so our collective intelligence and wisdom should be too. It is never too late to fall in love with the living world and fight in its name despite the enormity of our collective damage.
I love this quote and I think it’s why I felt inspired to think of this graphic, french philosopher Quentin Meillassoux writes "God is a concept far too important to leave to the religious." And isn’t that right…?
I’d be really interested to hear your reflections on this. In my life, I feel a spiritual connection with the world around me, especially on bushwalks and camping trips, and especially during and as a result of psychedelic experiences. This is an everyday wonder and gratitude for being here. The amazement that everything else is here too never ceases to impact me. And that we are here together is unreal.
But our experiences have no container to hold the broader and broadest communities together. It feels so disparate: unequal; dissimilar; separate. And my hunch is that that’s just part of the neo-liberal hellscape that has emerged over the last century (or maybe five, or maybe 100?). We are so siloed and in opposition.
I love spending time in nature. I feel grateful to live in a place where it is everywhere.
I hate seeing nature in decline. I feel, as you likely do if you’re bothering to read this, that it is everywhere. I know it to be the case, I consume news, and I’ve travelled enough. Nature is being destroyed in every pocket of this glorious place.
Nature is our god. That is just an obvious truth. Life and nutrition hold the keys to possibilities, without one or the other there is either unknown stuff, or there is nothing. Life depends on - and is - nutrition. Nutrition is just unknown stuff if there is no life to consume and become it, so I guess it is as good as nothing too.
Vessels | We need vessels to contain all this life and nutrition for this is everything we are made of. And then we need larger vessels, that can hold those first vessels, to hold all that we become together. And so on.
Isn’t it striking to consider the ocean, the ship, the vase, the human body and the human mind all as vessels with varying dimensions of containment?
The ocean somehow contains the liquid vastness the ship sails across. The vase contains the wine that is stored below deck. Our bodies drink the wine, it stirs a mind into fervor.
There is activity and containment everywhere. At each membrane, vessels press into one another with interest. The ocean is faithfully thirsty to swallow the sailors, their vessels, bodies and minds into its depths until they gather at the nexal point and are subject to annealing. Boarders, barriers, seals and edges become nothing more than fish food and parts of bodies. What once was held in containment is annexed into some greater arrangement.
Apparently, the association between hollow utensils and boats appears in all languages. Surely that points to a universal knowing. We are alive in the same nested realities as our neighbours. Yet somehow we have constructed a worldview of difference and indifference.
It seems absurd the degree with which those with some much nutrition - so much stuff - want to continue accumulating to the point where life is extinguished. It really really is like Mr Creosote. There are so many lifeless minds addicted to consumption.
Consumerism is an evil ideology living in a foul plastic tub of neoliberalism. There is no exploration of the broader senses permitted. Only extractive homogeny is accepted and all else is exiled to the fringes. It’s hard not to play into the act of eating the world alive. These systems are so pervasive, they are both deeply embedded and broadly dispersed.
Just like a leaky ship sailing across the sea, consumer culture is a shitty vessel. It does not take us to mythical distant lands, it sinks along with us all. But right now, in the most compressed and heated point we are metamorphising. Terrence McKenna once said "We are like caterpillars, contemplating pupation. No longer will I chew on cabbage leaves, no longer will I spend my time roaming around the underside of the foliage. Life must be a preparation for the transition to another dimension."
Currently it’s difficult to see land but it is getting clearer and closer with each day. A few decades ago we were stuck in the middle of the widest part - between the shorelines of sacred places; of a deeply felt trophic syntheos I guess.
Visibility of home is increasing along with turbulence. The water now churns at the edge, obstices clearly threatening total collapse. But there is a course ahead and we are becoming alert to transition approaching. Another dimension is now inevitable, and the great filter is drawing close.
Trophic syntheos might be about the sacred in all the small things that nurish us and guide us along the way. It is also about the sacred in the massive things that enable that nurishment in the first place. I’m sure there are a million ways this is already described, this is just my yarn I guess. My contribution to our safe passage.
RAIN is an essential formula for cultivating psychosocial wellness. It will have many other iterations, but the premise is fundamental to the human experience. At the begin of a fractal system there is the felt experience. How we respond to the direct felt experience ripples out and creates the world. In a fractal system we are all equally powerful and equally responsible.
The acronym RAIN is an easy-to-remember tool for practicing mindfulness and compassion using the following four steps:
Recognize what is happening;
Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;
Investigate with interest and care;
Nurture with self-compassion.
https://www.tarabrach.com/rain-practice-radical-compassion/
Here is a guided RAIN meditation:
“Information that does not take into account the full scope of interrelationality in a system is likely to inspire misguided decision-making, which compounds already “wicked” problems. Warm Data is not meant to replace or in any way diminish other data, but rather it is meant to keep data of certain sorts “warm” — with a nest of relations intact.” - Nora Bareson
https://warmdatalab.net/warm-data
This article is a work in progress and is subject to revision. Last revised 27-June-2022.
