The principle I am thinking about is “start small, with continuous improvement”.
I’ve used it for years to build systems in building companies without a budget, support, or even acknowledgement. I organically discovered it, and later found it had a name: “kaizen”. Toyota was using and writing about it in the 1960s. A culture of improving small things daily. No big changes needed, just lots of small changes.
Just start with what can be achieved without much effort. Then do something every day towards improving it.
I like the idea too. Not sure how it would work or look in practice, but let’s give it a go. In some sense it would be a bit like the AFT, where clicking on a topic leads to a discussion or an article.
I would like to think about the actualism wiki as a separate project though. No reason why they can run simultaneously. Some of the articles here could be pulled into that wiki. They would be edited and de-identified I’d imagine though as I think it would be too messy otherwise.
In the interest of a separate wiki, would be good if you more technically skilled folks could suggest a wiki software solution. I’d imagine - free, easy to use, web interface would be important
My first thoughts are I don’t really like the forum wiki. I want a solution where I can easily add links and links to empty pages that indicate someone has to write it. Not doable with forum wiki. And it clutters the posts too …
Nice work! I don’t 100% understand the necessity of a forum wiki tbh. Wouldn’t a pinned list of important posts or a channel of notable posts and discussions be enough?
I don’t mind if it is a separate place/project, but it would be important we could easily make backups and ideally have full control.
Couldn’t we install a plugin for wikis in our Worpress? There are several to choose from. It would also give more use to the home page of our site, eventually it would feed a better positioning of our domain, etc.
WordPress-wise this one seems nice BasePress – BasePress Demo , however we need to upgrade to Business wordpress plan to even try it, which is 25 EUR/month .
There’s always Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 's software… it is free and open source. If good enough for Wikipedia, good enough for us? Cost will probably be like $10/month for our own self-hosted serve costs, for the foreseeable future. Actually it can probably cost an extra $0/mo if we put it on the same machine we have for actualism.online … which will be fine until we need an upgrade. But cleaner to keep it separate.
Actualism also has a funny aspect of it being hard to find the “first” point to dive in and start explaining things. The nature of a wiki is such that, anywhere you dive in, you get linked to other parts of the wiki that link to all other parts, etc. Thus the organizational structure of this wiki reflects this circular and self-referential nature.
Well said.
For as long as I’ve contemplated making some kind of an introduction to actualism, mostly in the form of a video series, I’ve been uncertain (understatement) as to where exactly to begin, what exactly to cover and in what order. Not only is it the nature of actualism indeed to be some kind of a ‘package’ (“circular and self-referential”), but moreover it appears that different people’s experiences with the method show that they came at it from different entry points, and went through different ‘steps’ (or at least through a different ordering of the same steps) towards success.
The AFT site is such, that you don’t get through it page by page, with chapters ordering progression, but that you jump from here to there until something clicks, some kind of global comprehension of what it’s about.
As such… +1 to the wiki format.
I have recently been writing with the version of me from 10 years ago in mind.
Tomorrow I will get a more suitable laptop, and start.
I think the key entry point for an individual comes down to the social conditioning that one was raised in.
It’s my working theory at least.
I struggled for years and years to get anything going, only recently discovered that a lot of that was my conditioning as a “religious believer”.
It is understandable that one would want to appeal to the broadest possible audience.
Now with a wiki, each person so inclined to share their journey and when it started clicking for them can do so.
I was actually on the new wiki on the exact phrase “point to dive in” and tried to create a page. My android browser isn’t supported though. No problem, it’s a great excuse to buy a laptop tomorrow.
I started topics in this forums wiki as examples of playful ways to provide relevant starting points depending on a persons background.
It could end up an extensive page of links to pages, rather than another attempt at “one size fits all”.
I am very enthusiastic about fleshing out an entry point for the ex-religious. I am trying to imagine what I could have understood and reasonably had some success with 10 years ago.
This was great to discuss during the video chats because I always had this sense, after years of trying to comprehend and apply actualism as a coherent system that it still wasn’t being understood this way, was I really this dumb that I couldn’t get it?! Of course actualism is enjoying and appreciating but all of those ‘extra’ tools/steps we spend thousands of words writing about on here I could never distill into this neat A-B-C. It’s great to understand now why this was so, because it’s not a discipline or a system in the way that we are conditioned to look for. Where there is an external set of rules which if I follow, will land me at a guaranteed outcome. Which was exactly what my vipassana meditation was about! This was because the outcome was being constructed by the coherence to the rules, it is all already pre-laid out, be a good boy and you get your reward essentially
But then again aren’t most things this way that the actual doing cannot be distilled in a 5 step system? For example I might read the “5 simple step guide to running a business” and yet the actual running of my business in practice will end up consisting of thousands of various steps and adjustments that can be discovered no other way than by doing it.
I always think about getting a black belt in BJJ, because that’s like a 10/15 year endeavour on average (Actually I wonder which one will come first for me, the BJJ black belt or actual freedom haha). You could say the method for getting a black belt is turning up to train 3/4 times a week for the next 10/15 years. But this speaks nothing of what will be happening each one of those days training. Which will consist of identifying new things to work on, overcoming injuries, building strategies, sussing out where I’ve been going wrong, finding good training partners etc and no article can guarantee me this knowledge in advance because it is what I will have to work out based on this current situation right now, each moment again.
There is actually a million things I end up doing in those 10/15 years of ‘training 3/4 times a week’.
So I always thought the same with actualism. The method is simple - enjoy and appreciate but in applying the method I will find myself doing a million things, and I for sure have. It’s actually insane to think about the amount of ‘material’ that is gone over by an actualist. The journals here demonstrate this so well.
So I guess the point is that as with any genuine endeavour (one that is not merely a following of pre-laid out rules) the help that is provided by articles etc is merely pointers and suggestions for something that each person will have to work out for themselves.
Oh hey an idea for a wiki article - “why is actualism not merely a discipline”
Of course actualism is enjoying and appreciating but all of those ‘extra’ tools/steps we spend thousands of words writing about on here I could never distill into this neat A-B-C. It’s great to understand now why this was so, because it’s not a discipline or a system in the way that we are conditioned to look for. Where there is an external set of rules which if I follow, will land me at a guaranteed outcome. Which was exactly what my vipassana meditation was about! This was because the outcome was being constructed by the coherence to the rules, it is all already pre-laid out, be a good boy and you get your reward essentially 