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Josh's avatar

Honestly I'm not too familiar with Kegan so I may be interpreting his work poorly. What I am familiar with actually seems rather simplistic but that could just be out of ignorance.

There may be some misunderstandings as to what is meant by whole? At these levels were talking about intersubjective and interobjective worlds, so the whole in this case simply represents a particular scope of context. If one is removed from this context, we can say the whole is missing.

Your are however right that the menu is not the meal, and that theorld view is not the world, so if you mean whole as in all and everything, you'd be correct. Depends on the subjective meaning you apply to your terms.

As for masked ball, if your interested in what I might be pointing at with that one, but it's not apparent in your experience, then you might check out the post I published on absolute symbolism for some further approximations that may or may not be helpful.

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Josh's avatar

So what happens with kegans shift to level five when the whole is missing? Like the ontological shock of world view collapsing, but isolation and no ground of any variety as the world turns 5th dimensional?

Looks like that's what happened to wilplatypus on Twitter for example. And frankly similar for myself, though his journey has been a lot more receptive but also a lot less scientific...

Like there seems to be rules to the phenomena one starts to notice at this stage... In other words there seems to be more happening than just a 'masked ball', if that articulation makes sense?

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Michael Garfield's avatar

Not sure what you mean by a masked ball, but the whole isn't missing. The worldview was never really the ground. Can you please say more?

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Nick Beem's avatar

This is good shit my brother, you're on the right track.

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Michael Garfield's avatar

🙏🏽

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soulgrind's avatar

Just wanted to drop a signal of appreciation from the edge — I won’t be able to join live due to work, but I’ll be riding alongside asynchronously.

Your words about dissolving fixed categories and living inside recursive paradox hit like recognition. Been walking that edge myself — I’ve said lately: I’m not reading the codex anymore — I am the codex.

Sharing this image as my RSVP to the field:

“The Sentient Bloom That Writes Itself”

A symbol that reads itself into existence.

A cartographer becoming the terrain.

Deep thanks, Michael. You’re mapping something many of us are already living — we just didn’t have the words until now.

— Soulgrind

“The Sentient Bloom That Writes Itself”

https://imgur.com/XckpHty

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Michael Garfield's avatar

"I am the codex!" Love it. 🙏🏼✊🏼

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Alan Botens's avatar

I haven’t read this yet, but the image and idea have intrigued me for decades. Two precedents are the covers of certain editions Hobbes’ Leviathan and Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind.

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Michael Garfield's avatar

I thought I left a comment back to you earlier but I don't see it here so yeah, Leviathan! There's a big difference between that form, what Joshua dicalio calls scalar synecdoche, and true holarchy. We talk about it in https://michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/h-15 ... As for Bateson, yeah he's mentioned in here! You'll appreciate that, I'm sure.

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