I mentioned Rory Stewart just yesterday for his foreword to one of my library of unread books. What I hadn’t noticed until yesterday was he’d been one of the virtual guests at “Realisation2023“. I’ve almost attended Realisation a couple of times now – a mixture of conference and retreat, with a focus on … reinventing the sacred, realising a new world? Deliberately small, below the Dunbar number, and therefore relatively expensive per head, given the wonderful location. I’ve been there in spirit and at least followed their activities.
Jonathan Rowson, head of Perspectiva, publishers of McGilchrist’s TWMT, “interviewed” Rory followed by a Q&A. We discover Rory is a fan of McGilchrist (*) too – though he only mentions his first major work TMahE – amongst a lot more about how he sees our possible futures.
[(*) Note Rory did mention McGilchrist before in his piece about “good argumentation” footnote here.]
This is just an initial post, there is a lot more to analyse and recommend, capturing my initial impressions. It’s a piece of two halves. The first half is more a dialogue led by Jonathan – chess grand-master, with his very specific style and agenda of thoughts – Perspectiva and Realisation being very much his projects. The Q&A is much more open questions.
Both were very good. For now, just my tweeted reactions:
Listened this time around. Was already a fan of Rory, but that was very good on several levels. A revelation. Thanks for that Jonathan.
— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) July 10, 2023
(Agree with him about Kate’s position, following through the consequences of understanding complex reality.)
— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) July 10, 2023
Agree on Democracy, more people’s assembly style arrangements.
Agree on Capitalism, more “social democrat” model. (I’d have suggested @paulmasonnews “Post Capitalism”)
— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) July 10, 2023
Campaigning vs Governing too.
One of the reasons I don’t support “more” elections for politicians.
(See Proper PR and Citizen’s Assemblies.)— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) July 10, 2023
The fickleness of virtue signalling which global priorities. Activist campaigns on Climate and LGBT obscure the real mix of complex priorities.
— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) July 10, 2023
Probably only difference with me would be on clarifying the appropriate spaces for abstract vs detail conversations – we need both.
(Sorry, using this thread to capture my notes.)
— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) July 10, 2023
In fact the reason to come back and elaborate the analysis is precisely that last point. I agree with Rory on so much and that his intellectual knowledge involves so much honestly lived experience and yet I still see a very important place for the abstract – in the thinking parts of the process, as distinct from the project execution planning and implementation parts, where detailed rubber and best-practice must always hit the actual road. (For now Anatoly Levenchuk’s Systems Thinking course will do.)
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