Without OKIC, there is a gulf between what it means to claim “okay” and what it means to participate in society. Add to that the optimistic position that such participation will be satisfying psychologically, including giving rise socio-culturally to real and consequential generative collective activity. Small “we” of individuals adds up to big “we” of a thriving complex civilization.
“Okay” points to more than a fleeting sense of rightness. It points to personal agency that operates from a place sourced by timeless, personally felt meanings. Wherein we encounter our first paradox of many.
The above figures are alike in that they are overlays of each other, colored and labeled differently based on being I-oriented or You-oriented. What they also have in common and that ties them to the rest of the introduction is that each has a center point. Imagine the axis of each, as if it were a wheel. The center point is how we affix to timelines. Like the Copernican Revolution timeline. Like the timeline in a movie we see together and, while we each have a unique experience of the film, we are nevertheless able to relate to the film’s time-constrained plot and even integrate our experiences of the film. Integration is the topic of Part 2, the kaleidoscopic part.
Prepare to learn about how meanings in a timeless sense can be seen as orienting us towards timelines – of our own and, without of knowledge necessarily, of others as well. News stories tend to set up a psycho-social dominoes where “if one thing falls, they all fall”. A mystery or suspense story is a Rube Goldberg, cleverly complicated mousetrap, where once the right clue falls in place, all of the others make sense. That is an underlying promise of OKIC. A representational Rube Goldberg machine of reality.
It stays shrouded because relating to the central mystery of the universe’s relatability is rare. Few do not take it for granted. We are accustomed to placing mysteries at the feet of science, philosophy, or religion. We happily defer to, or even participate in, collaborative sense-making. Yet in doing so, like you standing alone on the Earth relishing feeling like the center of the universe, you can’t help but lose sight of the continuity between existing and relating that makes the enterprising ways of humanity possible. Humans revolve around relating, not the other way around.
Behind both figures below hides the Mysterioscope [insert link]. Read [insert link] find a set of iconography that you can use to puzzle through the figures below.
Agency and governance explored in detail in Part 2. Above is a preview of how mirroring, centering, reality and influence relate to the core generative functions of responsiveness, connectedness and confidence. The later are the subject of the last chapter of Part 1. The question marks after ready, set, go in the first figure are self-doubt as an intrinsic feature of stepping from orienting to navigating, from agentive attention to self-governance and/or governance by another.
Mirroring is to effective agency what generativity is to effective governance. Part 1 Compass lays the groundwork for orienting, which is the hallmark of agency in OKIC. Part 2 Kaleidoscope does the same for navigation, the hallmark of governance in OKIC. At the end of Part 2, they are shown again as two sides of the same coin.
OKIC’s structural features, as well as the necessity of its intangible but utter effectiveness, can be understood in relation to the system that potentiates it. Its backbone, metaphorically, is a tried and true set of cosmological relationships. If you are familiar with the basic character of photons, elemental matter, gravity, heat, radiation, and dark energy, what you stand to learn in general terms is how OKIC is true through representational nature of relating, and a natural response to the phenomenal universe itself. In this, trust in your reflexively awe-inspired observation that the cosmos, with its equal parts clockwork and surprise, is at its core a perpetually re-presenting, reliable system of systems.
For most, of greater interest than OKIC’s own underlying orientation (to the underpinnings of the existence) is the question of OKIC and direct human experience. This further gives such experiences the qualities of meta-meaning. Thoroughly true representationally-rich templating is what gives the universe a perceivable reality, one that is, above all, equally predictable and rife with mystery, paradox, and surprise.
Dawning awareness and systematic study of OKIC shall ready us to handily and meaningfully relate, beginning with contemplation, to reality beyond those global affairs fueled today only by our own grief, shame, abandonment, and despair. They are but shadows over our phenomenally perceptual, and with that more thoughtful, selves.