Waymaking: starting to understand it through Orientation, Sequence and Perspectival Trajectories

Sequence, Orientation, and Perspectival Trajectories

In our journey through life, the way we perceive and interact with the world is as unique as our own fingerprints. Imagine two individuals standing on the same street corner. While they share the same physical space, their experiences are vastly different. One sees a familiar route to work, while the other recalls cherished memories of love found and possibly lost in that neighborhood. This illustrates the diversity in our perceptions and realities.

Life is akin to two paths leading to the same lake. We're all on a continuous journey, crafting our unique paths, impacted by every moment from our past and every choice we make. This ongoing process shapes both our perception of the world and the world itself. Despite our inclination to categorize experiences into binaries like subjective vs. objective, mind vs. body, or self vs. world, our existence is more nuanced than these simplistic labels suggest. We often rely on these dualistic frameworks as cognitive scaffolds, but in doing so, we miss the depth and richness of human experience. The quest for understanding is not about dissolving these distinctions but acknowledging them as portals to deeper connections with ourselves and others.

Rather than striving to eliminate dualities, what if we embraced our distinctions as cues for deeper understanding? Our lives aren't about choosing between separation and unity; they're about navigating an ever-changing, interconnected reality. This journey demands a shift from seeking beginnings and ends to embracing the continuum of existence. This concept may initially seem abstract or daunting, yet it invites us to explore life beyond traditional boundaries. It's about recognizing contradictions and contrasts as opportunities to expand what is possible, both for ourselves and for others.

In philosophy and cognitive science, waymaking is an approach that considers life as path-making rather than point-solving. It's essential to understand how we create meaning and navigate life through the paths we forge. Like a path through a forest that does not preexist before someone walks it, our paths are made as we journey. By adopting this perspective, reality becomes a tapestry of multidimensional experiences, enriched by the diversity of our paths. Each encounter is a chance to explore the sensual and meaningful guides that connect us all.

Key Concepts for Reimagining Connections

1. Orientation: Every action and sentence we express has an orientation—it's always coming from somewhere. This orientation is generative, offering unique experiences that can be shared with others. Our orientations serve as portals for new sensory and meaningful connections.

2. Sequence: Sequence acknowledges the ongoing nature of our experiences. By understanding the sequence of events that lead us to our present orientation, we can expand meaning and empathize with others' paths.

3. Perspectival Trajectory: Our perspectives are neither fixed nor absolute. They're movements through possibilities that consider our orientation and sequence, allowing us to open new potential paths while honoring our shared history.

By integrating sequence, orientation, and perspectival trajectory, we move beyond the confines of dualistic thinking. This approach doesn't dissolve differences but honors the paths we've co-created. As we navigate our shared landscape, we gain the opportunity to learn, intersect, and create new pathways together. Reality is neither purely subjective nor objective; it's an ongoing process of waymaking. Our understanding is enriched by the layers of paths and connections that coexist, facilitating connections that defy traditional boundaries. This philosophy from Andrea Hiott encourages us to engage with the world, not by seeking definitive beginnings or ends, but by embracing the continuous, interconnected journey we're all part of. As this year closes, let's carry forward the intent to explore these new paths with openness and love, enriching both our lives and those around us.

TRANSCRIPT ANDREA HIOTT

  📍 📍 📍 📍 Imagine two people standing on the exact same street corner, so there's the same buildings, the same sky, and it's the same moment in time, but they're experiencing the same reality, which is real and is there differently. One person sees a route to work, for example, that they've walked a thousand times or driven if you're in the car.

Another sees a neighborhood where they fell in love years ago, and maybe it led to heartbreak or maybe it led to a bunch of cute little babies that they're now going to pick up from the nursery school. It's the same corner, different worlds or the same world, but experience differently. And this isn't about subjective and objective in any sense.

It's about. What I often call two different paths to the same lake, or you know, something very deep about how we make our way through the world and how this is ongoing from every moment we've ever been alive to whatever moment that is around the street corner to everything that happens after. And it shapes what the world becomes for us, but also what the world becomes.

  📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 Just that what it becomes. So even though most of us who believe, uh, these kind of statements like all, all is one, or we think in philosophy that we're beyond dualism, we're not dualists anymore. All of us have still been trained to think in these either or scaffolds these binaries or polarizations.

Because it's helped us come into awareness of the world. So subjective or objective, mind or body, self or world real or illusion, me or you. All of these ways we structure and understand the world are really deep scaffolds that we don't. Notice anymore, and that we even use those scaffolds to try to talk about having, somehow gone beyond them.

So even when we try to escape these things by saying everything is one or distinctions or illusions, we're actually still using those scaffolds because we're assuming that thinking this thinking self is somehow outside of all. Encountering and, and thinking about, whatever it is. So the truth is actually really much harder to grasp and it's very layered and multidimensional.

And it's this experience that this self that we're, are right now, this thinking, everything I'm aware of right now is really just the tip edge of a much. Deeper movement that is, uh, connected to even deeper movements and, and so on and so forth. And the ways that we change this part of it are through those deeper ways, and that is how we're connected to one another.

And it's inseparable and we change one another through that as that actually. So if we keep using these old scaffolds of trying to be at one with the world or reject dualism, actually we're imposing that scaffold on to what we're talking about. So how do we get, how do we ease out of that a little bit?  📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍

Um, way making is one way. I try to do it in philosophy and cognitive science, but I wanna try to talk about it here in everyday life. So what if, you know, there's not, we don't need to think about everything as one because that implies there's something other than the one. What if the problem isn't that we make distinctions? What if those distinctions are actually sort of clues or portals or cues or ways that we might begin to know more sense more, feel more meaning, connect more to one another, that it's actually about the way we're approaching those contradictions, or those oppositions or those polarities that makes them be that way.

So what if the problem is that we think we have to choose between something like separation and unity, for example, or difference in sameness when reality is more like making paths through and as an ongoing, ever changing, never has been separated. Reality, it kind of is a different way to come at this and it can.

It can sound, very hard to get your head around at first, or it can just you, if you aren't really looking at it deeply, it can seem really obvious or something, but it's actually really hard because what it means is not seeing beginnings and ends to just about anything. And that's a really hard thing for us to do.

But I think, you know, we might be laying down these ways for each other to be able to do that. So each encounter with what feels like contradiction or irreconcilable differences, actually. A chance for us to expand what's possible and for whatever life we're able to, to know as ourselves and, to know what self is from a different perspective.

And so it's much more like our body is always us and we're so often unaware of, of so much of it. I don't really say that. Right. So it's it's the same way that. Our body is always taking, it's so, our body is always making way, but we're never really aware of all of it. We can't be, it's too much for us to know every single thing that's happening in our body right now.

And that's fine, but just in that, just understanding that that happens all the time also shows you that it's happening at a lot of different levels too, like with the body itself and what it's in. So way making is this different approach to philosophy that's trying to think of life as path making. But um, also that implies a lot of important ideas that are really different from thinking of things as points that can be understood as either or, it's not about finding true reality.

  📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 It's about understanding how we create meaning and navigate life. Through the paths we make as the paths we make. You know, you're laying down the path as you're walking it. And there's a whole lot of analytic philosophy. I could tell you about this idea, but I wanna keep it at the level of everyday life.

' cause that's where we all live. Even analytic philosophers and cognitive scientists. Just think about like an actual path through a forest. It doesn't exist before someone walks in you. We make the path or we fly the path. If we're a bird or an insect or whatever, then, but once we move, once we make our way, we start to create this path and it's real and it changes what's possible for the next person who comes along.

And also for us, the next time we wanna go to that same place and different paths through the same forest can be different, completely different experiences, or even through the same landscape. Maybe in one area it's the desert, in another area, it's the forest, but we end up at the same place. So reality is like this, if you can think of it in a little more multidimensional way.

What we're doing here is opening meaning and sensual connection for one another. That is the point and the answer of all this. It really is where you're gonna fill your best and give your best. Uh, and it happens best when we're not being judged, but we are allowed to be different and to experience contradiction and contrast and, um, instead of thinking there's some one way that's beautiful, for example, it's like exploring beauty as this reality that already is.

  📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 Understanding. We're not hallucinating, we're not making reality out of nothing, but it is ongoing, that we're making it, we're making way literally. And reality is, is what we're making together and what we are. So there's no separation. It's um. Uncontained, it's not contained. It's no beginning or end. And ev our language assumes that just by using language, we assume beginnings and end.

So that's why this is so hard to shift out of, but it doesn't mean our language always has to assume that we can shift all of this together. Even the representational nature of it. part of doing this is learning to catch these habit habitual, dualistic, either or polarizing sort of scaffolds, not judging them, just noticing them.

most of which, you know, were never our choice by the way. We just sort of had to align with them in order to survive sometimes, but to go through the world in the way we were told to do it. But we began to think of these as paths instead. And then we begin to understand all the ways we're made and the ways we've made our shaping and co-creating as more like lines and threads and paths and ways and, moving.

but connected, never ending, uh, movements that we can trace. We don't always trace them perfectly, but, and we can never trace them. Absolutely. But we can look at it like that. to be able to do that, uh, there's a few kind of cues or keys, or let's call them cue keys that I think about when I am working with the way, making approach to all of this.

  📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 And I wanna just share those with you. Their orientation is one. Sequencing or sequences is another, and the perspectival trajectory is another one. So these are just kind of ways that might be helpful for you if you wanna begin to understand how to. Reimagine what's sensually and meaningfully possible in your connections with yourself and the world adds more like paths and layers of paths instead of either or.

Choices all the time. Um. And you just begin to notice the contradictions and contrasts and judgments as areas that are subject to change and actually could open you to a new sensuality and a new meaning, uh, that you're learning from yourself or someone else, or just the life that you're part of. So the first one I said I think was orientation and.

This is true of all different layers. Mostly I'm talking geographical layers here, but it's also true of the way we talk and the way we feel and and so on. As some of you know, all that's cognitive for me. But let's stick to this. So every single sentence or action from you or anyone who does anything to you is always oriented.

It's always coming from somewhere. Whether they know it or not, or we know it or not, it's angled, it's pointed, it's uh, there's some kind of what we might call intention in philosophy, though, that's a whole can of worms, I won't open. But there's, there's an orientation, even if it's not a purposeful orientation, even if it's chaotic.

So if we're thinking of just in a room, you know, you're always somewhere and that can always be sort of measured as you're standing towards the north or the south or whatever system people use to assess these things. But. You're somehow faced towards something. Um, and this is in all kinds of different layers and spaces in life.

So your orientation means you can only be in one time in space and that means it's actually very generative because you've had an unique experience. That you can share with others that no one else has had, but everything you encounter has had that too.

So that means you also have these portals all around you all the time for, new sensory experience and meaning so much as you can handle it because, you know, this isn't always easy. So we have to take it slow and be careful and, and find ways to handle this together. It's true of just about everything.

That's why we make movies and read books. That's why we write books. That's why we do philosophy and science because we're excited by these potentials that we sense that are there, but that we don't know yet or that we know, but we can't. We haven't put into representation, but we know them because we're so connected to everything because we're inescapably.

Part of all this. the way we can fill into those is by making the path and walking into it together. So this orientation is generative. It's not a constrictive thing. Even if it does constrict us, it's actually, almost like a signal that we're giving to one another and to ourselves, which sort of holds within it.

A lot of this resonance of where we're coming from and where we wanna go and, and so on. So those two people at the corner are oriented in completely different ways. I don't even remember what I said now, but maybe one's oriented toward picking up their kids and the other one towards work or you know, something like this.

But that's kind of what I'm talking about. And we can kind of sense that in one another before we even talk. And in the same way, we can sense a lot of other potential going on, and possibilities. And when we communicate about this, we make it visible representational so that we can then, have a little bit of agency about where or what new paths we wanna lay.

this orientation isn't about some kind of bias or something that we're gonna dissolve. It's more about just noticing the poise of our life and where it's heading. the meaning and sensuality that's tied into that and being care, taking care with it ourselves and others caring for this. This is precious actually.

It's not about escaping your perspective or trying to crush somebody else's perspective. Those are really not helpful, in terms of having exciting and community, and exciting and, caring life. Um. A life of meaning, let's say. But you can sort of start to ask, how am I currently oriented right now?

Like, what's my poise? What am I moving towards? What am I holding as my body? What is all this, directed towards? It's just an interesting way to start to think about it, and it's a way to help you start to find habits that aren't about either or, because when you're talking about orientation, you're not talking about something that's easily definable or an either or situation.

  📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 The second key clue or Q key, whatever I called it, is sequence. And this is really important because sequence implies that it's ongoing. And, um, this is good to connect to the orientation because orientation, we're almost taking like a little bit of a, a pause or a snapshot, but this is what I'm always talking about is navigability and the way you can like look back and trace.

How you've come into this orientation, what's led to it, whether it's your thoughts or whether it's your actual body and the movements that you've made. Those are both one process, but we sort of think of them a little bit differently so we can get a grasp of it. But you can really look back on this and, and you can see that how you got here matters and that it's still part of being here right now.

You don't understand a path by looking at just one point. Whether that's your path or another person's path that you're interacting with. So it's good to just in general understand that this orientation is actually connected to this long tell, this long sequence, for you, but for anyone you're interacting with.

And all of that is creating that. So this order, this direction, it matters what you've experienced and when you've experienced it. Even if we've experienced the same thing. If you experienced it when you're 23, and I experienced it when I was three, it probably had a really different shift on our orientation.

So we might end up at the same conclusion, but maybe we've had completely different sequences. So actually we're experiencing that conclusion very differently, and that's very important. Something we take for granted. Often we think we're talking about the same thing and we are, but we're also experiencing it very differently and, and, and we're missing the opportunity to expand.

Meaning and potential for both of us if we don't notice that. 'cause we usually shut down. So you might not be experiencing the reality that you share the same way. And this is kind of how meaning works. When we honor sequence, we stop trying to find some timeless, transcendent thing that's in all paths, because that doesn't even make sense because all the paths are different, unique experiences towards this, meaning that we're co-creating together.

So this opens your life, it opens your heart, it opens your mind, helps you enjoy a good movie or a good conversation or a good book. If you start to think about it this way, you don't skip to the end. There is no end and you can't ever find the beginning actually. But you can get a lot of understanding about the sequence, about the orientation, about the life that's been lived, and.

About your own too. those paths in the reality can literally be anything that we make together from all of that.   📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 So the third queue this brings up, or the key queue is the one I'm calling perspectival trajectory. And that definitely has a lot to do with navigability. And we can start to get some vision here about the other two that we've been talking about and consider it through this bodily movement and this thinking perspective, feeling all at once.

So you're not just standing somewhere, you're always moving your perspective's. Never actually a fixed viewpoint, even though we look at it that way. So this trajectory is a word that tells you what you're doing is measuring this ongoing process that even includes that measurement and can never actually be absolutely represented or measured or mapped.

So the trajectory is the best assessment and representation of it. To yourself and to others that you can give in that moment. And it has momentum. It has orientation, it has direction, it has history, and this is rich and wonderful, but it's also just the best we can assess at that moment. There's always so much more to it than we can actually see itself.

Is this awareness of the ongoing trajectory, but there's so much more to the body than just that. And we're trying to constantly sort of bring more into our focus and then also the making the path through doing that. And when we understand that something shifts, we're not trying to eliminate perspective to reach some kind of pure objectivity place.

But we're also not saying that there is no objectivity. We're, we're not trying to dissolve these into one another. We're recognizing that perspectives are themselves movements through possibilities, and this opens other people's perspectives and it opens you and your own while also realizing they're still grounded in that sequence, that trajectory, that history, that way, making that you've been doing since you were born, so you're not just floating free.

Suddenly you still have all that and it's still very meaningful and it needs to be shared. But you're co-creating this reality and there's this real shared process that's data hallucination and it cannot be fabricated. And it always shows itself. We can't, we can never hide it, unfortunately. And it never will dissolve because Exactly.

Because there are no beginnings and ends and all of this is not and never has been separated. So understanding this doesn't mean that all paths are equal. It just means paths are real and we're making them and we're co-creating them, and we're just one part of all of that, in this ongoing process. So what changes when you approach philosophy or just everyday life with this approach is that you stop trying to escape your situated existence, but you don't think you'll ever get to some place that you'll see everything finished and final.

That's not really the point. But you do start to see time and space differently as these paths and trajectories, and you start to let those sorts of beliefs in either or and all that fighting that goes with it hold a little less weight as you shift into a different way of dancing with it. It's not what it looks like right now, actually.

  📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 The, the world 📍 starts to feel different and you experience it differently and you connect differently. And you can try this out. Just, you know, watch a movie or read a book or have a conversation and just try to think of it this way. It's not easy, but you'll start to understand how you can start to see these multidimensional constellations of possibility.

And you can even maybe switch your perspectives a little bit like a kaleidoscope just to touch on some other things that we've thought about, before. So, you know, ask, what sequence of experiences created this path or what is making this orientation possible? Where is this trajectory heading? Those are the kind of questions you can start to ask, and then differences become interesting rather than threatening, and they're showing you other possible paths through the same landscape that you're co-creating.

This applies to communities and societies too, and how we handle all these, roads and paths that we're co-creating together. We're all path makers in a shared landscape and we can learn from each other. We can see how our paths intersect. We can create new paths together. We don't need to dissolve differences, but we honor these paths and we begin to fill into them as, part of the same landscape that is also co-creating us.

And. The world starts to kind of unfold through all these ways that we make. So think of those two people on that same corner with their different orientations and sequences. And it's not that they're in different worlds, but they each hold a portal to a path that could be the opening for the other, if they find the place where those paths, can communicate or touch.

reality is this isn't because reality is subjective or objective, but they're making different ways as part of the same ongoing way making. So many layers and dimensions all at once, and that's how meaning happens if we let it. And this approach is just trying to highlight and open some ways of doing that and many people are trying to do that.

So I hope you'll look, keep a lookout for them. And thanks for being here. This is the last diary of the year and I only said I'd do it till the end of the year, so maybe it's the last one, but. I really appreciate you being here and, um, I'm still doing all these videos and conversations, but other people will be moderating and helping, so just wanted to let you know that.

But I send you a lot of love and hope you're doing well. All 📍 right, bye.