This is The Praxis Circus.
This edition of the newsletter is coming in a day late because Easter Sunday morning was busy and I have decided to write this in the morning in one go to avoid procrastinating.
I hope your week and weekend were good? I spent most of mine recovering from Lagos Fashion Week and trying to keep my energy up during Arise Fashion Week - I did get to see Naomi Campbell in the flesh a few times on the runway so that is something!
I was also trying to figure out what this particular newsletter was going to be about and initially I was working on something to do with The Red Queen hypothesis -
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. - Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking Glass.
And as a massive fan of everything Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass it seemed like a great foundation on which to build a newsletter (and maybe I could use other Looking Glassian motifs and discuss doing business and living in Nigeria.
I ended up down another rabbit hole though. The idea of being deliberate about being open or closed to your environment as a means of engaging meaningfully and effectively with the world and switching when necessary.
The title of this newsletter comes from the anime Ghost in the Shell and it refers to the act of closing off all connections to the larger network as entering “autistic mode”.
I have been thinking about communities and trying to figure out how to create more value from connections as opposed to the current paradigm where scarcity (whether of quantity and/or access) is what assigns value to a thing. Anti-rivalrous vs rivalrous.
The other thing is how we as individuals can benefit from the judicious use of being open and being closed to outside connections. Cal Newport discusses how an embrace of too much openness is hurting productivity and discussed architect David Dewane’s idea of a Eudaimonia Machine a work space that allowed for people to switch between openness (make connections between others and ideas, be visible) and being closed (shutting off outside stimuli and focusing on work).
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Open
Something I have been coming across over the past few years is this idea that you make your own luck by being open to your environment. This Nautilus article is a good summary of the theory.
I also read this super interesting idea about sponge cities. Most cities do their darnedest to negate the natural environment and its systems - operating as closed systems - but this ancient Chinese approach to dealing with flood prone areas is getting a new lease on life by trying to be more open and becoming part of the wider natural system once more.
I have been seeing this idea of plant blindness in a few places, and it blows my mind that this could actually be a thing. If you are indeed blind to plants, you should do something about it.
Venkatesh Rao did a deep dive into the collaborative storytelling that can go on while haggling all the way back in 2008. It is a great read and some of its DNA made it into a more recent article on a potential economics of pricelessness.
I will close this section on openness and connections with this fascinating New Yorker article on the ideas of Andy Clark, a philosopher and cognitive scientist, who believes that we think with much more than just our brains. The idea has always had merit to me as, in my own personal experience for example, one can recall streets and directions to places when one is behind a wheel as opposed to having to give directions from a non-engaged perspective. The act of holding the steering wheel expands the capacity for recall like an external hard drive.
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Closed
This Aeon article on the Western notion of authenticity may not fit completely into the idea of being closed, but it does result from Western and Eastern cultures still not being fully open to each other. It provides so much food for thought. I tend to fall on the side of existence as one of process and change than one of being and essence, but notions of what constitutes a copy and an original are always in flux for me.
Japanese aesthetics have a lot to say about the relationship between closed and open states and transitioning between them. I enjoyed this primer on the various ways the Japanese think about space.
I shared this to a few of you a month or two back, but I think it is worth sharing to a wider audience. This post imagines a world where people had a structured way to close themselves off to accumulating new things and skills in order to enable them develop more the ones they already have. It is such a great idea and one I think we should definitely look into.
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Reading list
I want to recommend Gene Wolfe to everybody on here. He is one of my favorite authors. Here is a short introduction to him and his work. And here are a few more about him and his work.
We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.
and
Imagine a man who stands before a mirror; a stone strikes it, and it falls to ruin all in an instant. And the man learns that he is himself, and not the mirrored man he had believed himself to be.
If you read fantasy and science fiction I recommend starting with the the first books in his tetralogy, The Book of the New Sun.
For those not into genre fiction, Peace is a great introduction. You can also purchase his short story collections.
I also FINALLY rediscovered this excellent piece of short fiction by Eugie Foster that I have - no joke - been looking for on and off for over three years. I forgot the title and the author and couldn’t find it. I finally discovered the right combination of keywords and unearthed it again. Go read Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast.
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App recommendations
I have had a few requests for this so I thought I would provide a brief rundown of what I use on a daily basis.
Writing and note taking
I generally use Index as a combination Pinterest (without the sexy thumbnail display), links gathering app and for saving highlighted bits of text from various articles and essays I come across. I used to use iA Writer exclusively for all my writing, but I have moved recently to Bear, primarily for its speed at syncing across all my devices, but also because it is currently way more aesthetically pleasing. Microsoft Word is a good workhorse and the most compatible document format so it makes sense to either export stuff from Bear and Writer to it or start stuff from scratch in it. I tend to use it exclusive;y for more formal stuff though.
Photography and photo editing
iPhone camera, Halide, Snapseed
The iPhone X camera does almost all I am currently looking for from a camera to be honest so apps like VSCO and more lie unused in my apps folder. For when I want more options post shooting, I use Halide to shoot in RAW format and to do things like control depth of field and so on. Snapseed is my current go to photo editing app and it is crazy good. Like a mini photoshop with a great touchscreen UI.
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Hope you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter. Do remember to share it with people you think might enjoy it and leave me feedback! Too long? Just right? More photos?
Next week I am probably going to do a bit of linking and writing about fashion, design and art. I mention it here so that I can curse myself if I end up doing something completely different instead.
Have a great week!