Disarming Bullshit in the Interpersonal Wild
Tomorrow’s event:
Can You Know You Are Wrong? w/ Agnes Callard. September 17th @ 8:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Newly posted events:
The Spiritual Mission of America in the Anthropocene w/ Matthew T. Segall. September 29th @ 6:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
Internet Identity and Our Digital Selves W/ Kaliya Young (Identity Woman). October 6th @ 8:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
An event to get excited about:
Philosopher Queens w/ Nina Power. September 18th @ 3:00 pm ET. RSVP by clicking the image below.
Nina Power joins The Stoa’s Philosopher Queens—Rachel Haywire and Raven Connolly—to discuss the philosophical, collective, and personal dimensions of sex, the body, and adult development. Nice!
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September 16, 2020
I woke up to see an email in my inbox from Noam Chomsky. Looks like November works for him for a visit to The Stoa. I asked Daniel Schmachtenberger if he’d like to interview Noam, and he would. Now all this might fall through, events like this often do, but man, if this happens: EPIC.
I also invited Slavoj Žižek, Ken Wilber, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb to The Stoa. Slavoj and Ken have health issues at the moment, and are not taking interview requests. I wish them a speedy recovery, and I will circle back at a later date. I am optimistic that Nassim will come on, but I hear he filters heavily given all the requests he receives.
My personal fan-boy interview bucket list will be complete if these individuals visit The Stoa. I sense the Chomsky event could particularly influence The Stoa. It would be one of those events that would bring more eyes to this place, and encourage those who do not currently get what is going on here, to get what is going on here.
I have been reflecting on The Stoa getting more attention, and the advantages and disadvantages of this. I am doing everything one should do in order not to get more attention: shitty production quality, obscure titles with very little descriptions, disabled YouTube comments, and a zone-out worthy wall of text website.
Despite this, we have 5k followers via YouTube and currently have 137 supporters via Patreon. The latter makes me glow with gratitude, and the former, despite what seems like a low number to me, is pretty decent for a newish channel with no thrills I am told.
I could actively do things to bring more attention to this place, like having clickbait videos such as: 5 Incredible Things I Learned From Secretly Being Jordan Peterson's Client. I hope I do not go down paths like that, and I hope you call me out if you sense I do. I do like our guerrilla strategy towards stealing the culture, which is basically a “do awesome things quietly and people will eventually notice” strategy.
That being said, if there is an immediate uptick in people visiting The Stoa, I will be ready to change things. I imagine the communal podcast and wisdom gym elements will need to change if we are getting tons of people coming. This is probably a good problem to have.
This almost seems like a stupid thing to say, but I am realizing how central relationality is with The Stoa. We have all of these facilitators, sensemakers in residence, super smart guests, and super smart regulars, all giving their time, and influencing The Stoa’s growth. No contractual relating is happening here.
It is a mix of short-term commitments, ad-hoc agreements, high trust via applying the Hemingway heuristic, and, of course, listening to the daemon. I am not only listening to how the daemon is speaking to me, I am also listening to how the daemon is speaking to you. When you really listen to this, you do not have to play any “games.”
The secret of playing the metagame is being aware of all the social games you could play and then not play them. That is the most delicious game. There are containers to practice a gameless way of relating, e.g. conversational modalities like Circling and Collective Presencing. These are challenging enough, but playing this way in the interpersonal wild is even more challenging.
All of the lovely meta weirdos who come to The Stoa are plugged into, or at least resonate with, this way of relating. It is a spoiling experience really, as I am mostly hanging out with my metatribe these days. Outside of that, what passes for good social skills seems to be akin to good gaslighting skills. There is so much bullshit out there.
I am sympathetic though. If you want to be successful in the Game A world you've got to get good at what Martin Buber calls I-It relating. You treat the other person as something to use, in order to get something you think you need. Getting good at what he calls I-Thou relating is about unlearning the subtle ways we instrumentalize people to get things.
While I can turn on my charming and agreeable ways with most people if I need to, my patience is pretty low for inauthentic ways of relating. I am sensing another social skillset is needed, for those who earnestly want to stay in the I-Thou way of relating, but have to deal with people who are firmly situated in an I-It way of relating.
I was talking to Guy Sengstock, the founder of Circling, about the problem I see with people who do a lot of Circling or other authentic relating practices—they take their practice outside of the container where it is practiced, and bring it into the interpersonal wild, without any adjustments. This often comes across as weird to others. It comes across as weird to me.
I think a new interpersonal skillset needs to be developed, one that is in between the I-It and I-Thou worlds. I sense this would need to be akin to a martial art, something like Aikido. The social artist would need to have the ability to quickly spot and disarm bullshit, in a way that allows the other person to save face, while elegantly inviting them to a more authentic way of being.
Maybe this could be one of the first courses developed at The Stoa?
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The Stoa has hosted over 300+ free events since the pandemic started, and it will continue to do so, but it could use your support to continue to do so with quality and integrity. Support The Stoa @ https://www.patreon.com/the_stoa