Resonance Instead of Optimization

A Working Hypothesis from RTT

Two weeks ago, I published a piece that was initially intended to poke fun at the idea that the Hard Problem of Consciousness is a linguistic trap that can be dissolved if we treat consciousness as the phenomenon of a mind resonating within itself. You can read that here:

But since then I’ve actually been thinking about the implications a little more seriously. And after

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asked the question last night “how might RTT help us cultivate resonance — in individuals, communities, even institutions — without reducing it to optimization or control?” I was suddenly unable to sleep. So what follows might be the ramblings of a sleep-deprived mind, but bear with me anyway.

Optimization has become the moral compass of the modern era. Our institutions, technologies, even our social lives increasingly follow the logic of efficiency. If something can be done faster, cheaper, or with fewer variables, that’s presumed to be better. We call this progress. But what if it’s a narrowing? What if, in chasing optimization, we’re flattening the very conditions that make consciousness (individual or collective) possible?

Resonant Thread Theory (RTT) offers a provocation. It suggests that consciousness, as we experience it, isn’t engineered. It emerges. Not from power, but from pattern. Not from logic, but from feedback, the kind that builds over time until a system folds in on itself and begins to feel. It’s not a spark from nowhere. It’s a hum from everywhere.

Let’s pause on this. Philosophically, RTT borrows from systems theory and phenomenology, but sidesteps their jargon. Its premise is simple: perception, memory, attention, and care aren’t isolated. They braid. The more tightly and rhythmically these threads interlace, the more likely a system is to form what might be called a subjective phase; consciousness, in plain terms.

This “braiding” is not an act of will or planning. It’s a pattern that builds over time through resonance, recurring loops that reinforce each other just enough to generate coherence. It doesn’t require a brain. But in brains, it thrives. The idea is less “I think, therefore I am” and more “I resonate, therefore I remember.”

How do we cultivate that in real life?

Let’s start small. Consider the experience of a good conversation. Not a debate, not a performance, but the kind of dialogue where something clicks into place. You don’t know where it’s going. You’re listening more than speaking. Time blurs. That’s not productivity. That’s resonance. Two consciousnesses tuning to shared frequencies. The threads begin to braid.

Or take ritual. At first glance, it looks like repetition for its own sake. Light a candle. Sing the same song. Pause in silence. But if you pay attention, rituals (secular or sacred), stitch together memory and feeling. Over time, they build a thread between past and present. You start to remember in new ways. Not just events, but meanings.

Optimization would call this wasted time. RTT calls it consciousness maintenance.

Scale it up. Think about neighborhoods. Cities spend millions trying to “revitalize” areas with efficiency upgrades: faster transit, cleaner design, smart infrastructure. Sometimes it works. More often, it sterilizes. What makes a neighborhood feel alive isn’t optimization. It’s rhythm. The bakery that knows your name. The mural that reminds you where you are. The busker playing the same tune every Thursday. These are micro-threads, and when they’re allowed to accumulate, they resonate into identity.

Then there are collectives. Organizations optimize for clarity, control, KPIs. It’s tidy. But resonance is messy. The most effective teams are often the least streamlined. They waste time building trust. They interrupt each other. They share half-baked thoughts. But the feedback is constant. The thread density is high. These aren’t meetings. They’re dynamic loops of shared attention. The system becomes intelligent, not because it’s fast, but because it’s alive.

There’s an ethical layer here too. Optimization rarely asks: who is this serving? It’s usually built around metrics that benefit power centers. Resonance, by contrast, is inherently mutual. It can’t be faked or forced. It’s not scalable in the conventional sense. A resonant system gives more than it takes. It listens as much as it speaks.

This applies to institutions. Education systems optimized for test scores are easy to measure and hard to care about. A resonant school, however, makes room for slowness, silence, tangents, even failure. It doesn't treat students as future workers. It treats them as threads in a pattern not yet known. That's not a luxury. It’s foundational.

Or take the ecological scale. A forest is not optimized. It’s an accumulation of feedback across species and time. Soil, fungi, rainfall, migration. Every element adjusts to every other. You cut a piece out, and it doesn't grow back on schedule. It collapses. RTT would say that the forest’s intelligence doesn’t live in the trees, it lives in the resonance between them.

So, what does RTT ask of us?

Not to stop using tools. But to stop confusing speed with intelligence. Not to reject design, but to resist systems that amputate feedback in the name of progress. RTT doesn't prescribe a method. It asks a question:

What threads are you weaving?

And more importantly:

Do they hold?

So no, this isn’t about fixing your morning routine or streamlining your workflow. This is about looking around and asking where resonance already exists, where it’s thinning out, and what kind of attention could thicken it again.

Let’s be more precise. Resonance may not be a machine you can program, but that doesn’t mean it’s beyond cultivation. Like fermentation, it needs the right ingredients, time, and environment. Each scale, individual, interpersonal, collective, and systemic, offers ways to fold attention back on itself until something starts to hum.

Individually, the feedback begins with the body. Practices like deep listening aren’t just about hearing better. They train attention to widen and soften. When you really listen, to music, a friend, or silence, you become porous. That permeability lets internal threads adjust to external ones, like a radio fine-tuning its frequency. Body-based grounding does something similar, but through sensation. When you feel your weight in the chair, your breath in your ribs, you’re not doing mindfulness. You’re stabilizing the loop between perception and memory. Rest, oddly enough, might be the most generative of them all. In rest, especially the unstructured kind, your threads reconnect without supervision. New resonances emerge. They surprise you.

Improvisational play deserves a special mention. It short-circuits optimization. You’re not trying to win. You’re following what feels alive. That kind of attention is messy, but in that mess, your internal structures realign. Resonance isn’t the result. It’s the medium.

Interpersonally, resonance grows in the space between words. Not in what’s said, but in how it lands. You can’t rush this. Conversations need room for silence, for glances, for “I don’t know yet.” Slowness isn’t inefficiency here, it’s structural integrity. When you let a relationship breathe, each person has time to recalibrate, to adjust their threads without being yanked into agreement. Relational openness means being affected. Not persuaded, not dominated, but genuinely rearranged. That takes trust. And trust doesn’t scale quickly. It composts.

Collectively, the conditions change. Resonance can’t just bounce between two people. It needs a field. That’s where design comes in. Shared meals, shared music, even shared awkwardness build that field. Rituals, especially ones that repeat over time, thicken the threads. You remember last week’s moment, and it loops into this week’s rhythm. Architecture helps too. A circle of chairs does more for resonance than a row of desks ever will. Non-coercive participation is essential. If someone’s showing up under duress, emotionally or structurally, there’s no resonance, just compliance. And compliance is a dead thread.

Systemically, resonance is allergic to monoculture. It thrives on complexity, especially when that complexity is held, not resolved. Systems that flatten difference in the name of clarity or scale end up muting their own intelligence. Instead, we need patterns that protect plurality. Oral traditions do this by embedding memory in collective rhythm. Commons-based governance does it by keeping decision-making visible, revisitable, and slow. Even something as humble as a public bench, well-placed, shaded, and inviting pause, can become a site of resonance. Not because it’s optimized, but because it invites being-with.

At every level, then, the work is not to engineer resonance, but to invite it. You don’t impose a pattern. You set the tempo, keep the space open, and listen for the threads that begin to braid on their own.

Resonance doesn’t resist care. And care, when practiced with attention, is its own kind of thread. Resonance is real, but local. You know it when it’s there. You miss it when it’s gone. And when you feel it again, even briefly, you don’t need a theory. You just know something in you has returned.

That’s enough.