Glossary

Constant Becoming*
The world isn’t fixed, it’s always in motion, and so are you. Each day is a constant state of mostly accelerating change. To live well means leaning into the ongoing learning and adaptation this implies instead of pretending stability exists. Like it or not, you were thrown into this dance, so you might as well learn some good moves. Who you are is not a solid state of Being. 

Core Practice
A central combination of cultivation practices that are more basic and foundational to who you are as a person. While you might have a dozen self-cultivation practices in your life the core practice has few. These are non‑negotiable and form their own harmogenic power unique to you. Other practices may come and go but these are most likely to remain. Want a sense of purpose? Form a core practice. Think of it as the drumbeat in the background of all the other noise you make.

Decultivation
Yeah, I made up this word. If you aren't cultivating you are decultivating.  With Constant Becoming there is no neutral.  If cultivation builds up capacity, decultivation limits it, anesthetizes it, turns you into pure drift and distraction. It’s what happens when The Complex and The Weight steer your life. You don’t even notice it until you realize Netflix just stole another 100 hours of your life (if you even notice that).

Drift
The easy way. Just let The Complex take care of you in the midst of Constant Becoming and you won’t become anything but a consumer of some sort. You won’t create much of your life. You will be like everybody else or alone and just going along, one day after another. You know, whatever. Most people drift through their lives.

Enframing*
The recent tendency to see humanity and our world primarily as resources to be made into data, optimized, or exploited. Your living reality and everything else becomes raw material. The Complex and other things feed off this. Harmogenics pushes back by helping you see your life as a practice, not just consuming desired things and being constantly entertained.

Friction
The discomfort that shows you where growth is happening...or points to certain limits. Instead of running from resistance, you can use it as feedback. If it stings a little, that’s probably the sign you’re onto something real. Lean into it. On the other hand, if it stings all the time, it might be time to back off or try another way. It's your call, but don’t fold just because the ride got bumpy. Friction is inevitable in a life practice because practices don’t always suit you or meld together easily. Careful, this comes in different flavors. Notice which one you're tasting but act decisively.

Harmogenics
The art of seeing your life as a collection of interconnected cultivation practices. It’s not a checklist or program, it’s the way your skills, talents, and interests already strengthen each other once you notice them. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it, which is exactly the point.

Life Practice
The living web of habits, talents, skills, and interests that shape who you’re becoming. You already have one, whether you’ve seen it or not. The trick is to recognize it before it drives off without you. Most people have haphazard life practices because they don’t see their different activities as connected. They randomly generate benefits or harms in your life now depending upon what they are. You can just let your life practice do its thing unnoticed (the default mode, apparently) or you can make connections and bring your practices together in to one overarching Life Practice.

The Modern*
If we let human psychology determine where we are as a species in time then we are clearly still in the Middle Ages. Most people are working with a medieval mental toolbox (or older). Modern times have not happened yet, but they are fast coming. Not because of technology or political movements but because of the fact that the number of people with predominantly rational and/or pluralistic mindsets is growing faster than any other segment of humanity. Gen Alpha will witness “the birth of the Modern.” We are currently living in the late Middle Ages at the end of the Enlightenment Period, a roughly 500 year period of time. Seeing this is a major part of the psychic chiropractic adjustment you need.

Prequel Thinking*
The practice of framing the present as the beginning of what’s coming rather than the aftermath of what’s already happened. It shifts you from “post” thinking (postmodern, post-truth) that pervades our society to a forward stance (a future-shifted world, let's see what happens next), placing you out in front of change so you can meet it with readiness.

Prescient Readiness*
Preparing for what hasn’t happened yet by cultivating the skills that will matter when it does. It’s anticipation, not prediction. What’s coming? versus This will happen. Any number of things are coming and you best have the mindset to handle any and all of them. Be ready for multiple possible futures because the future will be a mix of possibilities. Think of it as packing a bag before you know the trip. You need this basic stuff no matter what happens.

Prime Human Skills
The basic, universal human powers that reinforce each other and have contributed to our survival. Though there are more than four (language, for example) I highlight resilience, innovation, imagination, and improvisation. Together these form our deepest inheritance and our best toolset for navigating disruption. They’re the all-weather tires you need for life’s unpredictable road. With them (and a few other skills like language) we have solid historic and genetic grounds for hope.

Self-Cultivation
The daily choice between building your capacity or letting it slip away. Everything you do is either cultivation or decultivation, and there’s no neutral ground. It’s the life version of “use it or lose it.” You identify a certain skill or talent or interest that you have and you develop it. Ideally, you develop multiple such skills, talents, or interests in combination to form your life practice. Just as the skills, talents and interests of humanity are widely diverse so, too, will they be different for every single person. Ultimately, you’re the only one one who can truly know you. Build don’t drift. Prequel thinking and prescient readiness are examples of skills accessible to everyone. You cultivate them yourself.

The Complex
The modern swirl of consumption, convenience, and entertainment. In your life it is the feeling that you should be buying something new or trending or being entertained as easily and conveniently as possible. That is basically all of western society today. It doesn’t actually force you into anything, it just makes drifting easier than cultivating. It’s fun until you realize you’ve been scrolling since breakfast.

The Weight
That odd mix of familiar fatigue, hyperreal stimulation, and multitasking decision overload. Maybe you feel directionless. Maybe you are working multiple jobs to make ends meet. There’s no time or place for yourself. And yet, when you find time, it pushes you toward escape, which usually means more of The Complex. Buddhism calls it dukkha. Most people just say suffering in a general sense, though not necessarily painful. Some days are easier than others but it's just there all the time.

Theit
The emergent force that makes practices add up to more than the sum of their parts. The nature of combining skills, talents, and interests. Something new suddenly appears. It’s the secret sauce that turns good efforts into surprising transformation. You can’t see it but you’ll swear something magical is going on.

*This term/concept only appears in Harmogenics: A Practical Guide To Constant Becoming.