Famously reasonable, for the people, and the planet
steamHouse
Whole Greater than the Sum of Its Parts
steamHouse is promoting a universal mentoring model that emphasizes conscious thinking and decision-making.
The objective is to design and promote a project and team based club structure (roughly akin to “Boy Scouts”) that includes training on using our ever present tools—head, heart and body—to decide well. Thinking, relationships and agency are tools used in every moment, by every human, regardless of context, social status or other available equipment. Yet no focused or comprehensive mentoring or educational program gives explicit training on these most basic of tools.
In an age of abundant and sometimes distracting, wrong or deceiving information, we all need to be active students of meaning-making. Social media, potentially deceptive artificial intelligence and our chosen news do not readily paint a fair and full picture of our world. We need curious, creative, critical thinkers, who decide from more conscious and purposeful perspectives, and less from unconscious animal defaults, psychological biases and triggered emotions.
As a fundamental skill, conscious thinking is a unique point of leverage with magnifying effect as an instructional investment. Improved decision-making using conscious thought, relationship and practiced action improves every other tool training or lesson we might emphasize in our schools. Improved conscious decision-making impacts every decision a person makes, and that notably includes an improvement in all of life’s critical decision-making moments! As lessons on the most fundamental aspects of being a human, instructional assets developed will have relevance globally and timelessly!
steamHouse understands these skills (thinking, relationships and agency) as so important and underserved that their lesson should be conveyed in the most emotionally engaging ways—embedded in a story space of characters and events students might relate to.
steamHouse is producing a storyscape that includes a utopia of principled Aspiringly Effective, Reasonable and Fun (ERF) Folk, who make case for, and offer training in “Every Now Tools” for conscious and purposeful thinking. These Earth ERFers, or TeraTerraTribers as they are also called, cultivate cucurbita (squash, gourds, melons, cucumbers) for their purported curiosity inducing effects.
ERFers honor two kinds of tribes, or folks to whom they feel affinity and shared purpose. One’s “comfort tribe” is usually a smaller, safer, more familiar group of people with whom we share a lot in common. We often find these folks easiest to be with, and so we can more readily be ourselves and recharge.
And ERFers think of their TeraTerraTribe as a “supertribe” of a great many (diverse) people who champion a very few, very important powerful ideas which, for them, include: Personal Agency, Mutual Respect, Objective Reason, Reflective Thinking and having a “Gold Star Best” set of good ideas to live by.
In ten years time, steamHouse will create a physical clubhouse setting and online story for a
web series sampling of core conscious thinking, relationship and agency lessons
persuasive case for a steamHouse model
feature length, low budget movie to entertain, engage, inspire and persuade
professional proposals for follow on for full curriculum build out, pilot or other projects
Over the next ten years, Club Real (the here and now activity of neighbor kids and families of Fairmount, Colorado, circa 2025) will be more and less connected to “Club Ideal” (our designation for the mentor model design part of the steamHouse project).
Club Real activities include a variety of monthly-ish activity with intent to create experiences and community for kids, families and friends. And, our four feature annual events—Bee & Seed Day, Snakes and Toed Beasts Day, SuperHarvest and Gourd Gala—will weave in Club Ideal storyline elements to give context and connection to those events. Club Real will also include project based activity—GoatRunner Robotics Team, and Story Team—that will “micro-pilot” ideas from Club Ideal.
In addition, Story Team will amount to a theater school training and movie-making project, coming in little bites over a number of years, through camps and one-off events. Participants may become contributors—perhaps as artists, actors, extras, animators, set creators, camera, sound and light people—to the Club Ideal’s production of a TeraTerraTribe storyscape, movie and lesson web series.
We are Think Big then Be Real. steamHouse offers compelling reason and example for a global curriculum and club design. We hope to inspire, or draw in better resourced and talented others to serve a cause worthy of more than our simple neighborhood home, and minimal resources can support in real time. When you come to a steamHouse or Club Real event, you will witness both earnest, professional, purposeful activity, and simple, maybe quirky, potluck community gathering that doesn’t take itself all that seriously—all at the same time.
Every Now Tools
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Everything you care about
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Understanding everyone’s place as including a self, others, physical world, and personal whole, reason suggests first principles of
Personal Agency
Mutual Respect
Objective Reason
Reflective Thinking
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Each of our moments is a decision that we engage with in one of three thinking gear:
Automatic Thinking
Conscious Thinking
Purposeful Thinking
For Thinking
Every decision is motivated by what we care about. The realm of what people care about is varied, vast, and multi-dimensional. For each of us, however, it at least includes ourselves, others and the physical world, and one’s personal whole, or spiritual and cosmological understanding of existence.
Many would agree the first principles for realms of self, others, world and personal whole, are respectively, Personal Agency, Mutual Respect, Objective Reason and Reflective Thinking.
The science of psychology tells us our thinking has an automatic, default mode. Most of us, most of the time, think in this mode because it is easy, and mostly works. But it is subject to influences of emotion, psychological bias and routine.
With effort, we can engage consciously, allowing for a greater consideration of context and analysis, and so also giving a more rigorous result.
Finally, many believe, too, that having a set of “gold star best” ideas or purposes, is smart and useful. Conscious thinking that also makes reference to one’s Gold Star Bests would be considered Purposeful Thinking.
While self, others, world and personal whole describe the “space” around us, the decision is how we move through “time”.
Every moment is a kind of decision, though most of the time we automatically do what we were doing in the prior moment, or we unconsconsciously decide to take a familiar action. Mostly, in most moments, “information means reaction”.
For more novel or complex moments, we might need to more effortfully and consciously consider a greater context of factors. We might need to allow our “awareness to choose action”.
Most of successful have a curated set of good ideas we might call their “Gold Star Bests”. Purposeful thinking references those best ideas and makes conscious fullest context choice of one’s “purpose, paradigm and practice.”
The science of psychology tells us our thinking has an automatic, default mode. Most of us, most of the time, think in this mode because it is easy, and mostly works. But it is subject to influences of emotion, psychological bias and routine.
With effort, we can engage consciously, allowing for a greater consideration of context and analysis, and so also giving a more rigorous result.
Finally, many believe, too, that having a set of “gold star best” ideas or purposes, is smart and useful. Conscious thinking that also makes reference to one’s Gold Star Bests would be considered Purposeful Thinking.
Prime Paradigms
THINK BIG… BE REAL
Plan before Acting. Consider purpose and possibility before proceeding too quickly to decision and action.
PURPOSE, PARADIGM, PRACTICE
One’s gold standard set of objectives, frames of understanding and behaviors.
DO UNIT
Every moment we decide to do, or not do, something. Our default thinking gear is automatic, driven mainly by habit, instinct and emotion. With effort, more rigorous, conscious and critical thinking is achievable. Best thinking is conscious, but also utilizes one’s curated gold standards of purpose, paradigm and practice.
PERSONAL AGENCY
We each control what we believe, say and do.
MUTUAL RESPECT
All humans have the same desire, right and responsibility to control what they believe, say and do.
OBJECTIVE REASON
Logical consideration of data and good modeling.
FLEXIBLE THINKING
Think again, because there is probably lots you haven’t considered. Consider another perspective.
EFFECTIVE, REASONABLE & FUN
Best practice for all humans.
There is fictional context imagined as useful for example, metaphor and interest generating value.
There is conscious design for lessons to have global, and constant relevance and applicability, at least at a fundamental level.
Prime Paradigms
Conscious & Purposeful Thinking
Universal Contexts—Decisions, Projects, Relationships, Teams
Universal Tools — Heart (relating), Head (thinking), Body (acting)
Universal Purposes—Personal Agency, Mutual Respect, Objective Thinking, Flexible Thinking
Mentoring club model
Global application
Parent support
TeraTerraTribe of Effective Reasonable and Fun
Why Thinking on Thinking?
Every moment’s decision, for every human, regardless of context, is impacted by the effort (and so quality) of the thinking applied.
Awareness of our level of conscious thought, is our first point of control, and so impacting every other thought that comes also in that moment. The tool we always use, including when we use every other tool, is our brain. For best results using any tool, one should understand its capability, bias and maintenance.
The fundamental unit of cognitive time in our lives is the decision. We decide whether and how to act. Often we bundle decisions and actions to further a larger whole called a project.
Understanding these fundamental cognitive aspects is a dramatically undervalued leverage point in educational investment and in the mentorship of humans—if the measure is giving students control in their lives.
