Stealing the Culture
Hey friends,
We had our first Existential Dance Party with Collin Morris tonight. Wow! What a great experience. This Stoic got sweaty. There will be more of these soon. Not to be missed! In the morning, Davood Gozli hosted a Writing Meditation at The Stoa: a group of people wrote in silence together for 45 mins. It was beautiful. This was followed by another Situational Assessment with Jordan Hall, which will be posted tomorrow.
Eight sessions coming up @ The Stoa. Much more are in the works. Here are the next three:
The COVID Spectacle w/ Davood Gozli. March 27th @ 9:30 AM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
The Communitas Prayer w/ Andrew Taggart. March 28th @ 7:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
The Stoic Breath w/ Steve Beattie. March 29rd @ 11:00 AM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
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March 26, 2020
I am up earlier than usual this morning. I was in the kitchen with the door open and it’s a pleasantly brisk morning. Socrates, my tabby kitten, is outside playing the hunter. In these peaceful moments that feel comfortable, and—dare I say— normal, I have to remind myself of what is happening right now. One of my wife’s co-workers said that it's like being in a bad dream, which I think is fitting.
It does feel out of place to sound overly dramatic at this moment though, maybe because I am biased by the calming chirps of the birds I can hear outside. This optimism could also be because I am feeling the momentum of self-care, as I restart the life practices that I dropped when the pandemic started. I’m feeling a hunger to earn my philosophy again, to embody it.
My good friend John Vervaeke shared his latest thoughts at The Stoa last night. We called the event the Meaning Kairos. John has become known for his series on the meaning crisis, but, ever since the pandemic started, there is a sense, at least in the so-called sensemaking web, that things are feeling more meaningful.
John prudently suggested that we should not conflate what is meaningful with what feels urgent, but we do have an opportunity to ride this liminal state that we are currently in towards something more meaningful. He said something in that session that I have never heard him say before: I basically want to steal the culture from the people who have been abusing us for a very long time.
It had a revolutionary feel, albeit a spiritual one. We cannot change the culture by winning the current game. We need to take it away from the ground up, by creating new systems of meaning, of what John calls the religion that is not a religion. I also recall him saying—I’m paraphrasing here—that campfires are proto-religious and are deeply spiritual places.
The digital campfire of The Stoa is starting to have a somewhat churchly feel, especially given the stuff I am doing with Andrew, such as the Communitas Prayer. I am experiencing a weird mix of emotions as I write this: a momentary feeling of self-importance followed by discomfort with that feeling, an urge to create ironic distance coupled with the urge to lean into the sincerity. I’m also, of course, feeling daemonic excitement.
I have to prepare for some upcoming sessions. One with Davood Gozli is coming up, then another with Jordan Hall. I am going to be a proper Stoic and take a cold shower first.
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