Inspiration

This resonates to me in many levels.

As for the primacy of practices, let me copy/paste from this conference paper I presented 4 years ago and that became seminal of the Pantheon Framework, in which I counterbalance the idea of cosmovision (worldview) with the idea of cosmopraxis:

Therefore, a new imaginary of generating, making, doing, working, producing, giving, gifting, reciprocating, nurturing, receiving, assimilating and exchanging takes over the scarcity centered imaginary of the Leviathan, that dominates our Western societies (Rawlinson, 2016). Those that want to orient their productive project towards a Pyhle might learn from those communities that counterbalance the common worldview imposed by ruling imagined communities (Anderson, 2016) or any other mode of governance relationship, with a cosmopraxis; a “network of practices where people learn – and are taught – to be very attentive, we could say ritually attentive, to what the ongoing timespace brings about, again and again” (Munter and Note, 2009: 87)

I would add to your connection of practice and conversion to the link I made in the same paper of "practicing" and "experimenting":

This is reflected as well in the idea of experimenting. When looking at the relationship between experimenting and becoming, it should be noted that the concept “experimenting” fluctuates in between two semantic fields, although the on-line Merriam-Webster Dictionary notes that the second one is “obsolete” (Anon, 2015). The first is related to the word “test”, and it is already present in Aristotle and his discussion of induction: after experimenting different particulars we can construct the universal. Then we know that what we expected to be is, or not. This is how we understand “to experiment” from Galileo onwards: to test and – hopefully – confirm our expectations. The second is related to the word “experience”. It draws back to the Stoic tradition, in which we experience something when it disrupts our opinions or expectations (Almarza-Meñica, 1985). The experience change the experimenter; makes her become something different. For Gadamer, who following Hegel rescued the original Stoic meaning of the word experience, “the cumulative nature of such experience is an instance of Bildung (formation and learning through experience) and is, as such, a living process of becoming (Werden)” (Davey, 2016, emphasis mine). As Gadamer wrote:

"Experience stands in an ineluctable opposition to knowledge and to the kind of instruction that follows from general theoretical or technical knowledge. The truth of experience always implies an orientation toward new experience. That is why a person who is called experienced has become so not only through experiences but is also open to new experiences” (Gadamer, 2004: 350).

As for religion; I see things a bit different. For a start, I strongly recommend as a source of inspiration this talk/conversation On religion that Derrida close to his death (here at the bottom of the page, in two mp3), in which he summarizes "That's why being a believer, even a mystic believer, and being an atheist is not necessarily a different state of affairs". Please; if you pay attention to it, you will see that Derrida has nothing to do with what people as Ken Wilber wrongly disregard as "radical relativism of the green meme".

I am also very fond of the book Food, Sex, and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life, in which the author challenges the idea that religion is about believing in god, instead of what religious people do. I quote from the introduction (I bought the e-book, so let me know if you want to have a look):

religion has everything to do with the relationships that constitute, form and enliven people in everyday activities in this material world. In particular, it is human relationships with other species that are the key to understanding real world religion. It is possible that religion began as a kind of interspecies etiquette – especially when members of one species needed to eat members of another. Religion continues today when people eat or do not eat together, when they engage or do not engage in sexual activities, when they include or exclude strangers in their communities

So yes, I think the metaphor of religion conversion is very relevant.

Finally, an anecdote regarding the Jewish religion and practice, (a religion I would not mind to convert to, see note below). In Catalan there is an expression: "Do Saturday" meaning for doing the deep house cleaning tasks of the week. It comes back to five centuries ago, when all the jew population was forced either to leave the lands of the Catholic Kings or to convert to Christianity. Since some Jews tried to stay and hide their religious practices, actual converts used to do the "cleaning" of the house very openly and noticeable every Saturday, so neighbours could check they were not respecting the Sabbath.

Note: I like religions, precisely because of their rituals/practices. I would not mind to convert to any "all-embracing religion" in which you can find virtually all the political spectrum, as happens in Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Paganism, Atheism and so on. I have been tempted actually to convert to all of them in some point of my life but I finally did not do it because of convenience. Which means that I would do it anytime for convenience :-)

Thank you @Toni Blanco :) That was almost too academic for me ... but the resonance came through :) I will try to make space for Derrida ... but can't promise I will be able to ingest it.

I very much like the idea of "ritually attentive" ... it feels like 1) what I most try to be and 2) what I most want to experience from others and 3) what most disappoints me when it i absent which is often the case).

I appreciate you liberating the word "religion" from its seemingly obvious frame. For me, religion begins when private rituals become collectivized, regulated, and enforced! I am OK with rituals, not OK with religious structures - physically (eg: churches) or socially (eg: norms and institutions).

Having been born Jewish, and raised in the intensity that is Israel (including a short time in the military), and having one set of grandparents who escaped Germany before WWII and one set of grandparents who were Holocaust survivors ... AND having married a non-Jewish woman (a VERY informative experience/experiment) ... I have come to inhabit an intuitive and established distrust of religion. In this context, I, personally, am OK pouring out the baby with the bath water ... and I do sometimes wonder and feel if because of that I have lost some (needed?) access to a kind of grounding that comes from established rituals. Yoga fills that gap ... to some extent.

I think I totally get you. I always think in me and religion without the actual intermediation of institutions, an existing long tradition in all major religions (of course minority, and institutionally problematic). Regarding the need of rituals (that you nicely fill with yoga), I wonder if you know the works of Alain de Botton (I guess this Ted Talk may be an introduction).

As for Derrida, that is a different story. I would give a chance to the talk. As I remember it, and opposed to his writing, is quite accessible and warm. He was a young atheist (of Jewish background) with a philosophical project of dismantling metaphysics, only to find that it was not possible to do such thing. So there you have him, as an old man, answering with lots of love to the questions of three religious scholars (of different religions) that are using his work for deconstructing their religions. Derrida has been told several times (and he has no problem with it) that certain lines of Buddhism developed his philosophical project in a most radical way (here a scholar link for @Alex Rodriguez).

2 Origami Videos :)

unfolding folding complexity

applied to science:

I very much like the idea of "ritually attentive" ... it feels like 1) what I most try to be and 2) what I most want to experience from others and 3) what most disappoints me when it i absent which is often the case).

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” – Simone Weil

Just sharing this excerpt/link here as I see it as relevant to the context of "value objects". This text uses Lila as a foundation for "a metaphysics of value". An exploration that may seem interesting to @Ronen Hirsch perhaps?

Taking Pirsig’s approach Capital may be viewed as “Static” Value and Money as “Dynamic” Value. “Transactions” are the “events” at which individuals (Subjects) interact with each other or with Capital (both as Objects) to create forms of Value and at which “Value judgments” are made based upon a “Value Unit”.

• https://www.opencapital.net/papers/ifnotglobal.htm

Collaborating for a Pattern Language definition/mining

The other day I stumble upon this document (when I was looking for an unrelated information!). Beyond of the particular pattern language, I found interesting the collaborative process described to define it (Methodology of pattern mining).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lVimpU5-cM45R6xqr4t6ryevLp03z7Yc/view

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