Being An Epistemic Cowboy
Hello friends,
I hope everyone had a lovely day.
Tomorrow’s (Fridays) events:
The Psychotechnology Playground w/ Bonnitta Roy Every Friday @ 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here: May 1st.
Socratic Speed Dating w/ Raven Connolly Every Friday @ 7:00 PM ET. RSVP here: May 1st.
The Dark Stoa: CRISPR as Art w/ Patrick Ryan. May 1st @ 8:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
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April 30, 2020
I spoke with Soryu Forall, the guiding teacher at the Monastic Academy, yesterday. We ha’ve spoken once before, when John Vervaeke and I were researching various ecologies of practice and authentic relating modalities. I reached out to him again to seek his counsel and guidance. I need help figuring out what has been happening to me, on a spiritual level.
It was lovely talking to him, I felt a deep kinship and philia, and it was good to be seen by him. With a patient heart, he listened and understood. We laughed like old friends, and the advice he left me with was both simple and surprising. What he told me corresponded to the wisdom of my own philosophical lineage: Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.
Stoics are philosophers of the world, and the world right now is my monastery. If I am here to change the world, I do not have to explain how I will change it. I will just change it. Besides, I have no idea how I am going to change it. My favorite line in movie history, from one of my favorite characters, Indiana Jones, embodies this spirit perfectly: "I don't know. I'm making this up as I go."
We have to make up a new world, as we go. Explaining, a lot of the time, comes directly from ego, from a deep insecurity. Needing to know a goal in advance and to know how one should conduct oneself in any given interaction comes from a place of fear, and a need for control. And yeah, a fear of bleeding at the knife's edge. Let go. Listen. Then buckle up for the adventure of a lifetime.
That being said, sometimes embodying your philosophy is explaining it, which is what I have been doing throughout these journals. To be clear, dear readers with modernist hearts, I do not have some textbook version of my philosophy, it is more as if, on a felt-sense level, I have access to a deep daemonic knowingness, coupled with a Socratic unknowingness, and the tension between the two allows me to go on this ride.
It feels more accurate to say that I have a minimum viable philosophy, which has launched me towards a new world, and I am making it up as I go. Each word or phrase I use is fully embodied on a felt sense level. I feel my philosophy. I breathe it. And I zone out in the deepest way, when I hear disembodied galaxy brains speak. They do not speak with soul. And for the record, I rarely zoned out when Peterson spoke.
The following quotation, commonly attributed to John Wesley, speaks perfectly to how Peterson spoke, and how I desire to speak: "Set yourself on fire and people will come for miles to watch you burn." You can only set yourself on fire if you own each word you use. If you speak with borrowed language, which can easily be sniffed out by those who have discernment, then you risk being a dead player, who will support a dead world.
Pat Ryan and I arrived at the same concept, with different coinages. He called such a figure the epistemic adventurer, while my preference is for epistemic cowboy. I bounced a definition off him: "Speak boldly what you sense to be true, in such a way that your ego is not attached to the truth claim. Then subject yourself to the propositional violence of others, and revise if reason demands it."
Pat added: "Don't be afraid of being wrong." That is where the modernist, and those who unwittingly have modernist hearts go wrong. They are afraid of being wrong on a propositional level. They confuse being precise with their word, with being accurate with their word. They are so tethered to the image of being smart and their unconscious strategies for signalling that, that they cannot risk being seen to be stupid. As Emerson knew:
Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannonballs, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.
So, with a daring epistemic cowboyness, I sacrifice myself in front of you. I seek your propositional violence and your misinterpretations. I am here to be wrong, and I am here to risk looking stupid, because looking stupid is a beautiful opportunity to practice one’s Stoicism.
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