Because you choose words to describe something, and there is at least one reason behind each choice. And when there are two or more reasons, like rhyme or meter, it is trivially easy to see—and oddly hard to break from.
Similarly, when you ‘agree’ with some piece, you agree for a reason.
There are many activities where there are reasons for multiple choices. If you play Chess you also have reasons for multiple choices.
If I would choose a practice with the purpose of creating self awareness, there’s the potential for more.
Circling (from authentic relating) for example causes a lot to be verbalized that might not have been otherwise.
But in chess, can you really question why you make that or this move and have an answer qualitatively different from ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time, I simply missed his knight’ or ‘because I was tired’? Chess seems to be unsuitable for introspection.
Stil, though, in each case, we’re making a decision that satisfies some criteria. In the example of chess, these criteria might just be more explicit (e.g. winning the game as defined by the rules of chess), whereas for poetry we’re trying to satisfy some function we ourselves don’t quite understand (e.g. “find words that make me feel a certain way”) that is more black-boxed.
I played more Go than Chess but when it comes to Go, there’s some room for introspection.
In Go I can get in trouble because I play to greedy. There are other principles in Go strategy that run more broadly and I would expect Chess to also have deep strategic decisions that have broader meaning.
It’s popular with the Bay rationalists and we have now a biweekly Circling for rationalist event in Berlin. My first contact with Circling wasn’t with the rationalist crowd but with other friends in Berlin.
I have also other facebook friends from another personal development context that do Circling in the US.
I would count it as a friendly discussion but there are a lot of different ways to have a friendly discussion.
It’s a discussion about understanding what it’s like to be the other person. What it’s like to be them right now.
But it’s difficult to express what it’s like to do circling via text. It’s similar to how I can’t tell you what it’s like to dance Salsa when you have never danced.
Different people can observe different things. There’s intimate sharing about how people feel like. People speak about what they feel. Sometimes they cry.
Now I wish someone else who also has done it would add their two cents...
(I have been present at something that I think was similar, and it didn’t work out for me—the rest of the group knew each other much better, and I felt like the sore thumb half the time.)
If rational thinking depends, to whatever extent, on self-knowledge, why not write poetry to raise self-awareness?
I haven’t had my own self-awareness raised by poetry. What makes you think that it’s a good tool for that purpose?
Because you choose words to describe something, and there is at least one reason behind each choice. And when there are two or more reasons, like rhyme or meter, it is trivially easy to see—and oddly hard to break from.
Similarly, when you ‘agree’ with some piece, you agree for a reason.
There are many activities where there are reasons for multiple choices. If you play Chess you also have reasons for multiple choices.
If I would choose a practice with the purpose of creating self awareness, there’s the potential for more. Circling (from authentic relating) for example causes a lot to be verbalized that might not have been otherwise.
But in chess, can you really question why you make that or this move and have an answer qualitatively different from ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time, I simply missed his knight’ or ‘because I was tired’? Chess seems to be unsuitable for introspection.
Stil, though, in each case, we’re making a decision that satisfies some criteria. In the example of chess, these criteria might just be more explicit (e.g. winning the game as defined by the rules of chess), whereas for poetry we’re trying to satisfy some function we ourselves don’t quite understand (e.g. “find words that make me feel a certain way”) that is more black-boxed.
I played more Go than Chess but when it comes to Go, there’s some room for introspection. In Go I can get in trouble because I play to greedy. There are other principles in Go strategy that run more broadly and I would expect Chess to also have deep strategic decisions that have broader meaning.
Circling?
http://circlinghandbook.com/ gives an overview.
It’s popular with the Bay rationalists and we have now a biweekly Circling for rationalist event in Berlin. My first contact with Circling wasn’t with the rationalist crowd but with other friends in Berlin. I have also other facebook friends from another personal development context that do Circling in the US.
Followed your link; what is it they do? Something like friendly discussion?
I would count it as a friendly discussion but there are a lot of different ways to have a friendly discussion. It’s a discussion about understanding what it’s like to be the other person. What it’s like to be them right now.
But it’s difficult to express what it’s like to do circling via text. It’s similar to how I can’t tell you what it’s like to dance Salsa when you have never danced.
But I am not asking you what if feels like. I only ask you what an outsider can observe.
Different people can observe different things. There’s intimate sharing about how people feel like. People speak about what they feel. Sometimes they cry.
Now I wish someone else who also has done it would add their two cents...
(I have been present at something that I think was similar, and it didn’t work out for me—the rest of the group knew each other much better, and I felt like the sore thumb half the time.)