The Meta Tribe
My friends,
I hope you are enjoying the liminal. I strongly sense now is the time we build a great relationship with it. That being said, I am going to try to step up my (meta)game at The Stoa and offer a lot more psychotechnologies for us to test and break. Now is the time to experiment like a philosophical cowboy.
I am grateful to Richard Bartlett and Patrick Ryan for the great sessions they had today. I am sure we will see more of these two at The Stoa.
Here are the events coming this weekend:
Situational Assessment w/ Jordan Hall. April 4th @ 11:00 AM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Metagame Mastermind Prototyping w/ Daniel J Kazand. April 4 @ 6:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Memento Mori: An Inquiry w/ Jared Janes. April 5th @ 11 AM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Communitas Invitation w/ Andrew Taggart. April 5th @ 7:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
***
April 3, 2020
I was quite touched by last night's Existential Dance Party at The Stoa. After the calm-down meditation, led by Collin, I felt quite emotional and raw. I looked at the Zoom screen and spotted a lot of my Twitter friends, whom I have never met in person. These people were once abstract tweets, now we are feeling things together, while dancing during a pandemic.
I was reminded of this sensemaking session, in which a few of us meta podcasters participated two weeks ago, on Tim Adalin’s Voicecraft Collective, just as it was dawning on us that the shit was going to hit the fan. A thought came alive for me during that chat: two tribes will form during this crisis: a kinetic and a meta tribe.
The former is going to be critical. I have a strong sense that localism will be the way. We need to start figuring out how to be neighbourly to our neighbours again. But the people I connect with more are the delicious meta weirdos on the internet, those who know what Kegan 5 means and would get Collin’s joke: "what’s the Kegan level where you stop giving a shit about Kegan levels?"
My whole life has been haunted by a sense of existential loneliness, and I think that is because I never found my people. At high school and university, I was always on the outside, watching as groups easily formed without me, or watching with Stoic detachment as memetic tribes made noise on the internet.
When I was much younger, and my taste in music was very different, there was this Third Eye Blind lyric that hit me really hard: I'd walk with my people if I could find them. I think I am finally starting to find my people, and I am already dancing with them.
I will end this with something that Malcolm Ocean said during the last EDP debrief: "I didn’t know that Peter Limberg danced." Stoics do dance, my friend, but I cannot promise you that they dance well. But how can you be a Stoic if you will not risk dancing badly?
***
Gift Economy / The Stoa currently operates through a gift economy. We are offering the Stoa as a gift, for people to freely use during these troubled times. If you are inspired to provide a gift to The Stoa, email thestoa at protonmail dot com. Your gift can take the form of money, support, services or ideas. If you wish to gift money, you can do so here or here for ongoing gifts.