A glimpse into my research process
Stepping back and taking a brief look at where we are in this series, and what I think about when I try to put together the next article. (Or is this really about Tools for Thought?)
Today, we’re going to do something a little different: I know last time I left you with a cliffhanger, and we will continue the epic story arc soon, but not today.
I generally don’t hear as much from readers as I would like (so feel encouraged to reply to the email version of the newsletter, or use the discussion feature at the bottom of the web version and let me know your thoughts), but I heard from a few of you that you “have not quite caught up yet” and are “a few weeks behind”, but “definitely want to catch up”.
So I thought today I give everyone some extra time to catch up and instead write a little bit about my process of putting together this series. That is very meta and not, or only partially, relevant to the series itself, but you may find it interesting or enjoyable. And if not, you can take the week off and use the time to catch up. ;)
Research
I’m avoiding the word “writing”. I don’t think I’m writing much here — paradoxically, right now I do — but most of the content in the newsletter so far is a collage of transcripts of video lectures, with some interspersed comments to highlight what I find important.
At the moment I consider my primary activity to be mostly a kind of exploratory curation of existing material. I’m trying to find a narrative path through a massive amount of content, an alternative path from the original, which I am still in the process of becoming more and more familiar with.
That’s what I meant by “work in progress” in the very first newsletter of this series. I (still) don’t have a grand plan of how exactly we will end up with the promised secular explanation of sacredness. But the goal is clearly defined, I’m more than confident that it can be accomplished — the only open question is how exactly. Each week I’m trying to make another step towards it. Well, except this week. Although, you could argue… nah, let’s not go there.
This means I’m still spending a lot of my time (re-)watching numerous episodes of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, and reading through their transcripts, hoping to find those pieces of the puzzle that will fill the holes in the rough patches of pieces I have arranged so far and which will eventually reveal the big picture we’re excited to discover.
Picture this as the equivalent to shuffling around countless index cards on a humongous table, trying to identify the most important parts out of 50 hours of lecture video content (plus several hours of additional relevant material, and various scientific papers) and putting them into an order that creates a narrative that I hope people can follow along with.1 You tell me, if I'm being overly optimistic.
By the way, I recently “audited” how much of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis has made it into this newsletter so far. You’d be surprised how little we’ve touched, and how much more there is to discover. Here’s a little sketch I made, as I was wondering about that:
Don’t worry, it was never the goal to cover the whole series. I always wanted to find a shorter path to the explanation of The Mirror of the Self, leaving lots of things out that aren’t absolutely necessary for understanding that particular concept we are investigating here.
But there you go: this is also demonstrating how this is not trying to be a summary of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, and merely just one path through it that draws a little from this series to make a specific point. If you resonate with the notion of a meaning crisis and wonder what to do about it, you might want to watch the whole thing.
Mapping the narrative path
When I say “I (still) don’t have a grand plan” for how to reach the grand conclusion, that doesn’t mean I don’t have any idea! Before I started this series, in fact before I even thought of publishing a newsletter, I made this sketch note based on the video segment I discuss in the first newsletter:
It visualizes the explanation and how its various components relate to each other. The problem is, some of these components are words that describe incredibly complex concepts that need to be explained. And these are the concepts I listed in the first newsletter. This newsletter’s mission is to make sense of each of them to put them all together to fully comprehend the visual above.
Some of these concepts should by now make sense to you already. We learned about combinatorial explosion, frames and framing, participatory (and all the other kinds of) knowing, and — most recently — relevance realization. But you can also see that there are several left that I promise we will get to soon.
Keeping track of the journey
Now, 15 articles into that journey, it starts to become challenging — even for myself — to remember what exactly I’ve covered so far, and what is still needed to put together a coherent narrative.
So I went through all my articles once again, taking notes of what I had covered already, and trying to mind map all the concepts to make relationships between them visible. That (currently) looks like this:
“Wow, how can this mess possibly be helpful?!”
That’s the crux with intermediate artifacts from thinking processes — the output is mostly useless, but the process of generating it is extremely insightful.2
I learned a lot as I was trying to spatially organize the concepts on the canvas. Patterns emerge and new connections become visible. Also, most importantly, you start to develop a sense for larger blobs of topics that “belong” together.
Now if I would draw the map again (and I will, eventually; likely many more times), I already know that I would arrange things differently. That’s the learning I gained from doing it the first time. This is an iterative process, and each iteration generates insight, which then influences the shape of the next version — a dynamic, adaptive process.3 You are going to hear a lot about dynamic adaptive processes here soon…4
The same is true for the newsletter series itself! Just yesterday I came across a small segment in a later episode of the video series that — had I remembered it — should’ve totally been part of the article about the 4 ways of knowing. In a way I now have a better version of that article in mind.
I could feel bad about this, and a younger version of myself would’ve exactly felt like that about it. “It wasn’t good enough; I should’ve published it later.” But you never know when you trip over another valuable thing in the future. At the time what I did was the best I could do. Since then, I have learned even more so that I can now look back and see that today I could do better. Progress!
And that’s the kind of learning process I’m after here, and that you — hopefully willingly — subjected yourself to witness. Eventually, after I finish the series with a proper conclusion, I hope to have collected many such insights of how I could now create a better version of it. And then I’m going to do that.
No, no, I’m not starting the newsletter all over again. Well, kind of… but not exactly. When we get there, that is when I also hope to transition from creating quote collages to actual writing — expressing many of these concepts in my own words, with then even deeper understanding. But that, for now, is still in a future that is at least a few months away.
I hope you’ll continue to stay with me on this path of discovery. Thanks for making it all the way here with me! And remember: your thoughts, questions, and even criticism is showing me that there are people out there who care, and I’m not just writing into a void. Say hi, when you have a moment. It’ll keep me motivated.
Let me know what you think of this glimpse into my process and if you’d like me to add more of that sporadically into the series5. Of course, please also feel free to ask any questions.
Next week we’ll begin to tackle the next big topic on the path to making sense of our creative process — dynamical systems. Until next Friday!
Mirror of the Self is a weekly newsletter series trying to explain the connection between creators and their creations, and analyze the process of crafting beautiful objects, products, and art. Using recent works of cognitive scientist John Vervaeke and design theorist Christopher Alexander, we embark on a journey to find out what enables us to create meaningful things that inspire awe and wonder in the people that know, use, and love them.
If you are new to this series, start here: A secular definition of sacredness.
For an overview and synopsis of the first 13 articles, see: Previously… — A Recap.
If that sounds to you like something a Tool for Thought should be helping with, I like the way you think. It seems very similar to the way I think about this…
An important lesson for those of us who want to create Tools for Thought.
Does today’s article begin to sound like it is somehow about Tools for Thought? Hmm…
And with it — as you may have guessed by this point — about Tools for Thought.
Does that mean there could be a meta-series about Tools for Thought as a separate layer of meaning hidden underneath this path of discovery? 🤔
Hi Stefan,
Just a quick thank you for your newsletter. I have watched all 50 Episodes of AftMC but always find something interesting and new in your take on John's ideas which takes me deeper into this fascinating world.
One day in the (far?) future I'd like you to tackle his After Socrates series in a similar manner.