Loko i'a

Please join with others in ventures in community vitalization and individual renaissance. Loko i’a is community-based social networking focused on coordinated and collaborative arts and the well-being and health in the community.

Loko i’a focuses on the union of a virtual community with a dynamic actual community. Memes and metaphors are attractors for expression and organization which, when taken as an integrated sequence, represent a model for a self-organizing system.

A vision for the network is to establish a forum for community organization, promote the collaborative use of studio, performance and exhibition space, model organizational civility, savvy, innovation and leadership and to bring together members wishing to join with others in improving their health, well-being, welfare and sense of belonging to a vital community.

Loko i’a has three core assumptions. The first is that all human interactions follow principles of self-organization. The second is that knowledge and information are open source. The third is that art is a transcendent expression of human consciousness. Based on these three assumptions imagine a network and matrix of interactions that avoids the traps of power and authority and dispenses with inclusion and costing based only on propriety and profit. While these dominant forms of our global inheritance have brought so much forward, they can be seen as auxiliary or adjunct to a core mission of open source, inclusion and artistry. Image a wide spectrum of participants focused on transformation, drawing energy and impetus from mindfulness, aesthetics, creative expression, metaphorical representation and cultivation of grace and compassion.

Self-organizing systems create an order and coherence that emergent from their own natures, transcendent of the individual properties. Envision a network that sets into motion elements that will allow participants to experience the action of self-organizing and to be part of the co-creation, be it in play, instruction, dialogue, encounter, experimentation, working flow or depth meditation. Participants will be open to enact their own truth and vision.

Given the chaos and crises found in the current state of the planet the question of how we are to be organized is most vital. We have organized ourselves into a condition that transcends us all and carries the danger of self-annihilation. Global transformation of group consciousness is an idea that has appeal but the problems of power, cultural differences, economic disparity and the drag of ancient enmity pose significant barriers. On the local level the challenges of sustainability, social and economic equitability and the humane treatment of the most vulnerable citizens offers the ground on which transcendence of our inheritance must be addressed.

Members of a social network and the metaphorical subgroups in the network are coordinated interfaces that hold and generate a pool of data. The data could be a domain of occurrences or events about the immediate surroundings of a community. Feedback could be provided to the users in the immediate surroundings. Just as in individual biofeedback a person can perceive below the level of consciousness and make adjustments, so group or community feedback might be similarly processed. Such feedback could be the ground for open appraisals and communal goal setting. The product of the system may not be content or message, but information about the process of connection.

Actors perceiving the feedback can create a new configuration by their actions that are reflected back to the source. The pulsing of individuals and the emergent nature of the rhythm and vibration of the group creates even more complex forms. Imagine ocean surf that is affected by the actions of the surfers. The resulting rhythmic or harmonic stream of information could have as complex or simple derivative representations as the medium would allow. As such, any rhythmic, periodic, harmonious, measurable, predictable oscillations of human endeavor could be logged and counted, fed back, and put into mathematical or artistic representations.

Art is as ancient as humanity. Body and natural rhythms started the drumming. Call and response became the song. The music of verse became language. Deep in ice age caves are murals of the hunt, signed by a hand. The medium and materials have changed over the millenniums but the essence of bringing form to formless and animating the lifeless remains the same. The artist enters into the gap between what has happened and what might be and draws the mind ahead through exaggeration, proportioning, abstraction, amplification, juxtaposition, distortion or transliteration.

To be artful is to strive for expression that breaks through the mundane and banal and gets to the essence of life and relatedness. Being artful is not just creativity but creativity with the rigor of excellence. To be rigorous but not creative is to be only technical. To be creative but not rigorous is to be silly. Imagine a network where the participants are striving for both creativity and rigorousness. Add sensibilities of thoroughness and mindfulness. These elements, in harmony, are transcendent. If the realized event is to be art, then the doing is art. From the point of inspiration to the moment of exaltation, the doing can be continual acts of spontaneity, originality, technical excellence and genius.

Any practice of medicine, healing, psychotherapy or personal growth is encompassed on the integral path. Some are sitting and meditating, some are exploring the mind/body interface, some teach disciplines, some are dialoguing in private and in groups. All integrate in mindfulness. The challenge is to specify how the abstract of all these approaches integrates. Across what gradients and by what mechanisms does what we do exist, from the simplest point in space to the most chaotic field phenomenon?

Since the field phenomenon will always outstrip the capacity to quantify or describe, the only available shared intellectual device is the metaphor. A map is a metaphor. A social network is a metaphor. The metaphors should not be confused with the actual reality but they can be taken as useful stepping off points. This is especially important when dealing with the integral nature of dual or polar phenomenon underlying human potential and nurture such as religion, science and art.

Loko i’a does not seek to supplant or to compete with what already exists. Integral does not vie with passions or fixations. It merely abides. Side by side with the actual and enacted, Loko i’a provides an open space in which the creative, innovative and experimental can be fostered and nurtured. It is but a hope that Loko i’a can bring forward the expressions, solutions and new beginnings to the current chaos and crises plaguing our communities.