Culture War Consultancy: Tasting the Thought Soup
Tomorrow’s events:
The Stoic Hustle w/ Peter Limberg. Every Monday @ 6:00 AM ET Patreon events. 4 hours.
Stoic Breath: Sunrise Edition w/ Steve Beattie. Every Monday @ 6:15 AM ET.RSVP here.
Un-Saving the World: Doing Good Without Burning Out w/ Michael Smith. March 1st, 8th, and 15th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
The Situation: Sensemaking the Pluriverse between Design and Dasein w/ Peter Jones. March 8th @ 4:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Everything You Know About Nature Is Wrong: The Case of the Blooming Cosmos w/ Howard Bloom. March 1st, 8th, and 15th @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Newly posted event:
The Meta-Crisis: Living in the Bardo, Waiting to Be Born (Again) w/ Bonnitta Roy. March 16th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
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March 7th, 2021
I will continue my half-joking culture war consultancy shtick, and discuss another important concept that one should know about when navigating the culture war: thought soup.
This is a term from David Chapman, author of the awesome metarational Meaningness blog, and it basically means this: a slew of thoughts from a diverse array of religious and philosophical sources that people have uncritically adopted. Chapman uses the following examples:
You have to honor your feelings.
All religions point to the same truth.
You have to make your own, authentic choices, and fight off the mindless messages you get from society.
Everyone has their own truth, because everyone has their own perspective.
Be in the now.
Most people would nod their head at these, but as Chapman notes, these are not particularly compatible thoughts:
Almost no one in the West had ideas like these a hundred years ago. Almost no one now realizes that they come from (respectively) psychotherapeutic theory, Hinduism, Existentialism, postmodernism, and Buddhism. Almost no one recognizes that if you take such ideas seriously, they are seriously incompatible.
The thought soup is more of a normie thing, as most memetic tribes have coherency in their worldview, and autodidacts are live playing weirdos when it comes to their worldviews. This thought soup thing reminds me of “moralistic therapeutic deism,” which is basically an unconsciously curated selection of Christian-esque beliefs that are self-serving, and have the essence of the path of least resistance. Basically it treats God as a concierge.
If the unexamined thoughts making up this soup have anything in common it is probably that they are self-serving. The thought usually has a temporary therapeutic effect, even if it is not long lasting, it will find its way into the soup.
It is good to taste the thought soup, to get a sense of the kind of thoughts that are floating around there. It is also good to have the capacity to spot the kind of thoughts that end up in the soup. Spotting one is a skill of course, but they usually have a certain feeling about them, the kind of feeling that comes when somebody is speaking as if something is an existential given.
Why is all of this important to know? Because these thoughts are leverage points for existential openings to occur, or for memetic capture to occur. As mentioned in a previous entry, memetic tribes are trying to capture normies' minds, and these leverage points are good sources for that.
If you can challenge these thoughts, in a way that is good-faith and provocative, then you can give pause to those who used the thought, and you will have invited them into a new “world.” A Stoic disclaimer should be stated here of course: virtuously invite them into a more beautiful world.
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