Becoming ...
I'm Pamela Powers Lawson. Though for purposes of this website I am spotlighting my maidan name as I step into my fullest "powers" in my wisest years. I find great comfort that I was bestowed this name at birth considering what I have unearthed.
"Sometimes to survive, we must become more than we were programmed to be," to quote the new children's movie "The Wild Robot." And I agree.
My organic path does not match the inherited thinking that saturated society in the 20th century, right down to the end of it. Even now, 24 years into the 21st Century, we are still in the process of disengaging ourselves from mechanized mental models that are slower and harder. They work for machines, but they bog down complex adaptive human beings.
I am part of a consilience of dynamic thinkers emerging from the limits and lessons of the past century, who know if we are to live well, and meaningfully, in this dawning era of interconnection, it will require a dramatic transformation in the way we see, think and act.
About me
Investigator.
I am deeply inquisitive. A critical thinker that is heart-led,
with a frisky fastidious streak — often quiet and independent, but also chatty, when inspiration strikes, all of which has been a hoot for me to master.
Meantime, the diverse plotlines of my life have provided me with ambitious sets of circumstances to feed my curiosity, test my traits, embrace my sage, and empower my grace.
As love would have it, I married a man who is a dot-connector, too. Phil has a passion for systems science, and maps, and a strong desire to "contextualize" complex human challenges in life and business.
We are a rare pairing, married now 50 years, in that we cherish our differing energies and perspectives, and value the expansion that has unfolded when we traveled to the depths and breadths of our love and friendship; meeting our pains, behind the ferocity of life's strains, while sharing in the sweetness of our gains.
Do we sound co-dependent in this modern age? I prefer terms like cross aligned and co-inspired to do the work we desire. We're not two halves of a whole. Though I've said that before (I know!) We are two whole people teaming up on a ground-breaking goal, interweaving our strengths in a dance of do-si-do to achieve, with cohesion, ten times what is possible on our own.
Co-Creator.
I was woefully under-resourced when I got married at 18.
And Phil and I were ill-equipped for the intense mission work we committed to, throughout our entire 20s, in the Deep South (USA) serving disadvantaged rural areas, providing support to marginalized groups, paying our own way doing backbreaking menial jobs. But those immersive experiences were THE gift.
They exposed us, during direct physical presence, to many of the 'whys, how's, and what ifs' that drive human motivation and behavior. We discovered this in the role of explorers, unburdened by professional opinions.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, as we acquired business acumen, we worked in leadership roles at companies, deploying cutting edge online technologies. We launched our own start-ups. We traveled to other countries on business; rubbed shoulders with creatives and intellectuals, and once lived in the prestigious Hollywood Hills (of Los Angeles, CA).
We were 44 when we dropped out of the business world and moved to a rustic cabin in the Colorado Rockies to think, write, and reflect. By then, we'd also experienced two historic natural disasters, within 18 months of each other, the cascading impacts of which required extreme ingenuity to navigate.
We weren't wealthy when we escaped the corporate hustle at 44. We paid our way during that time through modest means. But something was birthing itself through us and it was essential that we grow still for the delivery.
Integrator.
Introducing a big idea is no small feat.
That's what Phil and I have been doing with the company we started 19 years ago, (in that rustic cabin.) We named it Spherit, after the spherical modeling technology that Phil created, and our mission is dot-connecting — or more precisely, contextual reasoning for more meaningful human-AI interactions.
We understood long ago that AI is necessary for improving how humans navigate our complex world now. But it should boost our humanity, not eclipse it.
In 2014, we even blogged about the need for AI to support people with more wholistic approaches to healing, learning, growing, and solving.
Hybrid AI has the potential to help humans grow in ways once impossible to scale. It can introduce each of us to personalized situation-specific information to expand our personal awareness quickly, while also streamlining how we engage with human professionals who are here to assist us.
But contextual reasoning must be a part of it, to dignify the human experience and improve how we communicate who we are.
As wild as it sounds, we’ve been trailblazing between the tech world and human specialists for nearly two decades. And validating our methods as a research and development SaaS has been tedious, I ain't gonna lie. We are the most unlikely candidates for this task, but we won't give up until we cross the finish line of this "calling."
Writer. Artist.
Suppressing my creativity nearly cost me my life.
I grew up in one of the most racially and ethnically diverse religious groups in America, but also the lowest and least educated in national rankings.
I was a fundamentalist — third generation, and proud of it. My ambition was yoked to 'end-of-time' proselytizing. I was taught extreme self-sacrifice and I excelled at it.
It didn't matter that I was effortlessly creative. In art. Writing. Poetry. And music, to a lessor degree. Personal pursuits were frivolous. Self-centered. I was not formally trained, so why indulge in them? Until I nearly died at 23 — physically paralyzed by a menagerie of disorders and conditions.
My body was speaking to me, but I hadn't yet learned her languaging.
During my two-year healing journey, (while under a doctor's care,) connecting with my creativity was one essential part of my recovery. Soon enough, Phil and I opened a photo-art studio, and within a short time we had produced a tourist brochure that earned praise from local community leaders, and statewide attention, for its originality.
This sparked bigger opportunities. I became creative director at a multimedia firm in Dallas, TX, during the high-tech 1980s. I did book covers, photo illustrations, and related endeavors, while living in Los Angeles, CA, in the early 90s. And in the late 90s, in Denver, CO, I directed the design and edits of a half-a-million dollar print catalogue for an international stock photo agency.
But writing became my primary love during a stint as a community journalist. I earned numerous awards for my reporting and storytelling over nine years and was priviledged to work under many stellar editors [one, was a best-selling true crime author; another, won a Pulitzer.]
Nowadays, when my investigative side becomes too intense, my creativity surfaces like marshmallows in a cup of hot chocolate. I've even added ecstatic dance and online sisterhood circles to nurture my well-being.
Pathmaker.
My greatest challenge emerged at Spherit, where I communicate complex ideas and R&D results for an emerging market.
Can you imagine the younger me — in mission work, living in a trailer in the Deep South, earning a living doing backbreaking menial jobs — doing something like this today?
Phil and I were headed in the opposite direction than the recommended road to success, back then.
In fact, had we measured our chances of success against scientific studies and “norms,” it would have appeared we were screwed. We weren’t in possession of the building blocks. We didn’t know we needed them.
Many years would pass before academics introduced studies about the very experiences that were impacting our decision-making, and our health and financial well-being.
Those studies are now known by terms such as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and the Social Determinates of Health (SDOH), and the Effects of Social and Economical Variables. There’s even Death by Despair research, introduced by economists, about how working-class life is killing white Americans without a college degree. And there's research nowadays about "Lost Einsteins" — about the women, minorities, and children from low-income families that could have had high-impact discoveries had they been exposed to innovation while growing up.
With no knowledge of this, we were flying by the seat of our pants, responding in real-time to the relentless strain of our environment and circumstances. But we struck gold in spite of it.
Our Great American Adventure
One winter day in 2014, while living in the "in-between" spaces of life, we hurriedly packed up our computers and clothes for an 11-day stay out of town in a modest hotel.
We shuffled our suitcases out the door of one location, heading for another, and in the distractions of that moment we accidentally left behind a polyester bag containing our portable hard drives and computer cords. Stored on them were irreplaceable personal and business files and years of R&D research.
The bag was sitting under a large flowerpot outdoors, in an active neighborhood, where Phil had placed it briefly while packing up the car. He remembered this, 63 miles later, after arriving at the hotel, and after driving through a snowstorm. Mercifully, a relative went in search of it, found the damp bag, and meticulously dried off every item, while we ordered a transport service to pick it up and ship it to us.
We would have been toast without that bag.
Sure, we were industrious. We were clever. We could land on our feet, repeatedly, like the best of folks. But that little "Bruhaha" sent my reptilian brain to hell; me, traveling a well-worn highway to get there, populated by road signs with dismal options: No turning left, No turning right, No U-turn, Slippery road, Falling rocks, Road work, Dead-end, Wild animals ...
Had we grown up to be athletes, musicians, actors, or woodworkers, our lives might make more sense to most people. Instead, we were traveling a road earmarked for the elite of academia and tech mavericks.
We were painstakingly forging a trail in between diverse market sectors. With each of these branches of industry having its own expectations for how to show up and participate. Each, having its own presumptions around credentials. Each having its own siloed operating systems, complete with 'insider' ways to appraise and eliminate outsiders.
You can see why our R&D adventure has required extra time and extra measures, to test our system in different fields. While on the slow boat, though, we unearthed a treasure trove of competitive advantages, making us a secret weapon of holistic strategic wisdom.
It's no small thing to live outside the boundaries of algorithms. In society, and AI. We learned this in religion, and life in general. We aren't even a good match in our relationship, if you rely on those upscale personality profiles to assess us. Fortunately for us, we discovered vital nutrients in the nectar of our differences.
It's why we so fervently connect our dots. There's a wellspring of hidden data in there.
Bill. Reba. Oprah. Tim.
I was born the same year as Bill Gates and Reba McIntyre, Phil, the same year as Oprah Winfrey and Tim Berners Lee.
You'd think by now we'd have something traditional to show for ourselves.
To date, however, Phil and I have never owned our own brick and mortar home. And we have no children.
We understand what it takes to reimagine one's life. The price. The losses. The steep learning curves, each time we engaged with other tribes or groups.
Along the way, we discovered the currency of decency. When we showed up to life with decency, with ingenuity, vulnerability, and transparency, crazy and wonderful opportunities came into existence. It’s how we've been able to live in several unique homes and settings, from time to time that nurtured our wellbeing, expanded our worldview, and revived our willpower.
Better still, it put us on a path that connected us with humans* who enriched our lives. Some championed us, and/or, introduced obstacles that revised our understanding, becoming fields of attraction that challenged us to rise.
We are THE "proof of concept" for a life lived in the heart of wholeness. Where sphericity meets polarity and new ways of being are finding a voice. Where humans can 'create products that change the meaning of our lives,' (to quote Guy Kawaski).
Transparency
Our experiences may have exposed us to continual change and disruption. But it also inspired us to create a technology for everyday decision-making that streamlines how people navigate any complex situation with surprisingly effective results.
It took a lot of years to figure this out. But it makes us uniquely qualified to champion the possibility that humans can still grow, in leaps and bounds, even when we can't turn back the clock.
[If you've read this far, thank you! The scrolling images next take 5 minutes to view clear through.]
Force of Nature
I once lived five+ weeks in a posh area of London when Phil was hired, on a short-term consulting contract, to direct the operations of a New-York based visual communications company with offices in London, Paris and Brussels.
We occupied a tiny flat on Montrose Place in Belgravia, in a building that housed an ambassador, which required round-the-clock police patrol. The famous Harrods department store was in walking distance. And one day, while browsing through a British fashion magazine inside the store, I saw a photo of a woman on the society page who had recently invited me to lunch. There she was, the daughter of a shipping tycoon, pictured alongside Joan Collins, the Princess of Wales, and Evangeline Blahnik. And. I. Had. Just. Eaten lunch at her house and chatted with her affluent friends.
In those days it took a while for my nervous system to process the extraordinary things I was experiencing, in context with my life as a whole. Considering I had also sat on the soiled bed sheets of impoverished women who spoke to ghosts lurking in the corners of their rooms, a few short years before. Me, unafraid to show up in unsightly despairing spaces where life was excruciatingly hard.
As Phil and I moved through religion, business, and the arts; through deprivation and privilege, through convention and eccentricity, we began to see patterns. We began to detect common core characteristics in many human activities, no matter the box. No matter the labels.
This caused us to pause. It egged us to go in search of the nuances that get lost in our often-compartmentalized world. It inspired us to advocate for the subtle but relevant uniquities that make up each one of us, and better understand how they impact what we say, think, and do.
All this ignited a passion in Phil and me to give those nuances a voice, in a dignified format, inside a contextualized learning container.
(I'm a) Woman Inspired (by) Tenderheartedness, Curiosity, and Heroics.
... And truthfulness. But that's a tricky word. It can be misconstrued.
I live in a multifaceted world. I see life in spheres. I see facts as nodes on bigger spheres. I see those nodes, in context with other nodes.
Wholistic seeing and truth-seeking are superpowers, to me. When I live my truth, inside a more contextualized view of the world, I find calm in the storm.
Speaking of storminess and upheaval ...
I've lived with the devastation and disruptions to communities and lifestyles by nature's acts, and human acts, in multiple catastrophic instances and settings. Both personally, and when I reported on them as a journalist.
These realities contribute to the wild and wise woman that I am.
They frame my grit and gratitude. They challenge me to integrate my certainties with life's unknown unknowns. They remind me that back-to-back crises can compound our emotional stressors, requiring deeper levels of personal attention to restore wellbeing.
It is with this care that I stare at myself in the mirror and look into the eyes of my fellow human beings.
Inner Consilience
In case you didn't know ... Phil and I met at the age of six at a church in Denver. We lived four miles apart in the most polluted zip code in America. And by the age of seven Phil had wooed me into his bed.
If you must know the shadowy details, he invited me to the top of his bunk bed one night to watch “The Twilight Zone” on TV, but we fell asleep together and his mother had to wake us. (What’d you think I was going to say?)😝😆
It was a short while after my mother died of MS, at a time when Phil's little sister was recovering from Leukemia during prolonged hospitalizations.
Both our families had moved to Denver from different states seeking low-cost healthcare at a 600-bed alternative medicine facility for poor children. Both our households were in survival mode.
The journeys that unfolded for our families caused us to switch houses and schools, repeatedly, leaving friends and losing track of each other. Eventually, I got a stepfamily, while Phil's father took his brood on futile out-of-state moves. By the time Phil graduated high school at 16, he'd gone to 11 different schools in four states, including West Virginia. By the time I graduated high school at 17, I'd gone to nine different schools in Colorado.
But we had an unforgettable bond and we finally reconnected.
Now. Here's the thing about all that ... we got through it, right? Sure. Sort of. But, also, Nah.
To be the best humans we could be, we had to go in search of our purest dots. The ones that got scattered hither and yon, when we were forming our childhood -and-young adult perspectives.
We had to let go of the pointless dots that took up space. The dots that threatened to efface us. The dots we'd scooped up from our surroundings. Dots, imagined into existence by our temperaments. Dots, from intergenerational conditioning. (Talk about a lot of dots.)
For me, examining my dots was like, “Going Dark But In A Good Way,” to borrow a title from an article about singer-songwriter Billie Eilish in Envelope magazine.
This task also required I upgrade my social cognition. Which I, first, had to realize was even 'a thing' before I could comprehend how to do the thing! 😉
Yeah, so, that s**t took some time. And believe me when I say, I'm all in for 'quantum leaping,' when it comes to healing my stuff. But some of that stuff was herculean to identify, requiring courage to trace, and love to face. A 'damn proud of myself' achievement.
The art of me and you.
In 2019, I was invited to join a small team laying the groundwork for a powerful documentary on forgiveness, centered on the lives of two mothers on opposite ends of a tragedy: the mother of a high-profile shooter, and the mother of a high-profile victim. COVID would eventually dash those plans, but not before I'd invested 80+ hours of research deep diving many facets of the topic in history, religions, and other modern-day sources. And it changed me.
I discovered stories of people who experienced the unimaginable, and yet, 'bore witness to the resilience of the human spirit,' as one website so eloquently put it.
This realization increased for me during 2020-2023, when I joined several quality online women's circles. I observed women from around the globe activating their inner magic by going inward in ways they had never done before, sharing their tough human stuff in safe, theme-oriented, reflective spaces. I witnessed a human's most basic need to understand and be understood.
I saw how personal storytelling and meaning making can transform lives. But I knew that part already ...
You. Me. We. Are works of art, underway. Recognizing this and honoring this is our gift to ourselves ... and to the world.
FORWARD FLOW AS HUMANS WE GO
Turbulence at the edge of chaos can lead to self-organization and emergence, or the system collapses
I wrote this lengthy website in the era of X, Tik Tok, and Instagram. But it was written for those of you who know that our extraordinary human experiences demand formats to digress, de-stress and digest. To unfold the creases.
Especially, right now. When it's easier than ever to feel insignificant on social media, without tens of thousands of followers. And when our relevance may feel challenged in the rapidly evolving world of AI and LLMs.
Cool but lifeless
In 2022, a piece of artwork generated with artificial intelligence took a first prize at the Colorado State Fair. To New York Times opinion columnist, David Brooks, the artwork 'looked cool at first, but after a second it felt kind of lifeless.'
It was missing a humanistic core, Brooks said, as he further wrote about his experience of viewing this art. "It's missing an individual person's passion, pain, longings and a life of deeply felt personal experiences. [The AI art] does not spring from a person's imagination, bursts of insight, anxiety and joy that underlie any profound work of human creativity."
Goose bumps
Brooks also wrote the following paragraph which gave me goose bumps when I read it, because it directly relates to the work Phil, and I do ...
"AI will probably give us fantastic tools that will help us outsource a lot of our current mental work," Brooks wrote, "At the same time, AI will force us humans to double down on those talents and skills that only humans possess."
Fantastic tool?
We believe our simple-to-use Context Convo Maps (when integrated with AI) will train human brains to grow, learn, heal, and solve, within wholistic mental models. They will help us shift from using 'machine-thinking' on human beings, to 'systems thinking' for human beings. This simple switch in how we see, think, and act, will become as useful as online calendars and maps. At least that's our dream ...
Autobiographical reasoner, visual storyteller
As far as 'doubling down on the talents and skills that only humans possess' .... Here's what I've been doing to keep myself sane throughout our rambunctiously meaningful adventure:
I have developed techniques as an autobiographical reasoner and visual storyteller. And this webpage was an artful way for me to show up and share who I am with you.
These mad skills have been a part of my mental hygiene for years. They've been a profoundly rewarding way for me to therapize myself throughout my own turbulence and self-organization, which has delivered me to a better place.
Hmmm. Maybe I should mentor people on ways to do this? On becoming an autobiographical reasoner and visual storyteller, as part of their mental health and well-being regimen? [Did you know there's new scientific research that presents the value of this?]
Would you be interested? If so, use the chat on this website to let me know!
Why now?
At a time when a large percentage of Americans feel we are in a mental health crisis; at a time when younger generations believe they face more difficulty feeling financially secure than their parents did at the same age; at a time when population ageing is an irreversible global trend; at a time when there's blame galore, to go around, and we have the potential to burn ourselves to the ground, we, also, have the chance to . . . add your own words here, dear readers. Because you get to play a pivotal role in shaping what comes next.
Releasing the tow line at altitude ...
For Phil and me, this is a precious and surreal moment for us. It's like being a passenger in a glider plane the moment the tug plane releases the tow line at altitude. There's silence as you move smoothly, continuously, and effortlessly through the air ... not sure where or when the pilot will land you somewhere.