Speak With Cannonballs
Tomorrow’s events:
Stoic Provocations: Anti-Intellectualism w/ Brent Cooper. December 15th @ 3:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Theory U w/ Otto Scharmer. December 15th @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Newly posted events:
Slow Down, Calm Down, Scale Down, and Step Down w/ Tyson Yunkaporta. December 21st @ 8:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Philosophy of Success w/ Tom Butler-Bowdon. December 22nd @ 12:00 PM ET. 2020. RSVP here.
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December 14th, 2020
I started playing chess with my dad on Saturdays. This move is in service of getting into the right relationship with the most important relationships in my life.
Last Saturday, we decided to play Hnefatafl, or “Viking Chess.” I absolutely loved it. Compared to chess, the gameplay feels more immediate, fast-paced and aggressive. The moves are cleaner and make more sense to me. Some of the moves in chess seem so arbitrary. Like why do knights have this weird L shape movement and queens are basically super pieces?
Do not get me wrong, I do enjoy me some chess. I find it a good way to slow down the mind, and it helps you to not become emotionally reactive when somebody attacks you. You need to be open to the possibility space, while aware of the constraints of the game, and if you are playing the metagame you recognize there are multiple games at play.
I used to worry about losing when I played chess. I stopped caring about that though. When I stopped focusing on losing I was free to focus on winning, and I am getting better at winning. Besides, while winning against my dad does feel good, losing against him also feels good, because him winning makes him feel good.
Playing for the right reason helps. I started playing chess when I was a teenager, originally because I felt it would make me seem smart. I thought the following at the time: playing chess is what the cool smart intellectuals do. What a pretentious reason. Pretentious reasons are not going to help you win, and I feel like winning these days.
Knowing what you want to win is the best kind of winning. I have been privately journaling since mid-November, which is when I stopped publicly journaling on a daily basis. There was intrapersonal rawness I wanted to deal with, which I did. I feel clearer on what wants to be won, and it has to do with my most important relationships.
I do not know how long the next phase of this experiment is going to be. It may have a darker quality, perhaps more Viking like, and aggressive. I might be surprised though. It could be lighter, and more playful. I am open to the possibility space of what wants to emerge.
If you do not like the direction of this experiment, then I invite you to stop coming to events, unsubscribe to this mailing list, and stop supporting me via Patreon.
While this may feel harsh to read, it is in service of setting expectations. I do not know where this particular experiment is going in the next few months, and I cannot continue if I am bogged down with expectations, especially if those expectations are coming from a needy place.
Yeah. I want to be likable, and a part of me wants everyone to like my art. That is not realistic though. Some people have different tastes, and some will have Stoic Daddy issues. I can engage in closed-loop communication with the best of them, and I can “rule omega” criticism and challenges all day. I do not want to do this though. This thing will stop feeling like art if I do, and it will start to feel like a job, in pleasing others.
I guard my premises pretty carefully in these journals, and I am truthful when I say I am not attached to whatever propositions I put forth. If some boyish narcissism does come online, and I overstep on the propositional level, then I am happy to say I am wrong. My ego is not attached to being right.
I was chatting with Bonnitta last week, and we were talking about how having a transperspectival mind leads to so much misunderstanding. The system 2 types want to lock down your weltanschauung, to create protocols for your seemingly fickle daemonic-inspired behaviour, and those with Stoic Daddy issues will be wildly uncharitable, and play the boring ad infinitum “projecting the ego” game.
Being misinterpreted is important though, as it is one of the best opportunities to practice Stoicism, especially if this practice is done in the spirit of crazy love. In an earlier entry I wrote:
There is an arrogance in thinking your interpretation of yourself is the best one, but, besides that, I want to risk being misinterpreted, and welcome perspectives I wouldn’t normally expect. The blind men and the elephant metaphor just came to mind, along with the thought that I need to allow myself to be the elephant.
In another entry on being an epistemic cowboy, I quoted my daemonic homeboy, Emerson, and I will quote him again:
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.
Fuck yeah. Speak with cannonballs, become the elephant, and practice your crazy love. Now this is the kind of art I am interested in.
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