Beginning to Believe
Tomorrow’s events:
Surrendered Leadership w/ John Thompson. September 22nd @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Late Stage Civilization w/ John Zerzan. September 22nd @ 6:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
How to Be an Anarchist w/ Glenn Wallis. September 22nd @ 8:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
An event to get excited about:
Conscious of Selfish Genes and Meme Machines w/ Susan Blackmore. September 24th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP by clicking the image below.
Susan Blackmore, a scholar of memetics and consciousness and author of The Meme Machine, visits The Stoa for a free-ranging conversation with Rebecca Fox, followed by a Q&A.
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September 21, 2020
I woke up later than usual, and my body is pretty exhausted. We have six events today at The Stoa, and I have to prepare for facilitating two of them, so I might not write much this morning.
Things are moving fast, with this place, with me, with the world. I want to go slow, with today's words, and be grateful for everything. There was a lot of excitement last week when I announced that Noam Chomsky was visiting The Stoa. As someone wrote me: this was a moment when The Stoa levelled up.
Jonathan Rowson, Director of Perspectiva, tweeted: The Stoa, a child of the pandemic, has grown big and inviting enough in a few months to now host perhaps the world’s best known intellectual, Noam Chomsky. Well done Peter Limberg and crew.
And Dave Snowden, a highly regarded management consultant, and a complexity thinker who influenced the likes of Jordan Hall and Daniel Schmachtenberger—hence who influenced our whole sensemaking space—supported The Stoa via Patreon. He tweeted, It is not often I join something I speak at, but this group is just fascinating: #NewPatron
Man. Those tweets mean a lot to me. All the support and positive encouragement I am getting mean a lot to me. The first three months of this project I was losing my mind and creating without thinking, the next two months I was swimming with existential doubt, wanting to blow-up this project altogether. Now, I have found my groove, and last week I had my Neo moment.
In the first Matrix movie, Neo confronted Agent Smith in the subway. Instead of running away, which is sensible to do when you are confronted with an agent of the Matrix, Neo turned around and faced him. Trinity and Morpheus were watching outside the Matrix.
Trinity: What is he doing?
Morpheus: He is beginning to believe.
Yeah, I am beginning to believe. I am beginning to believe in this thing. I am beginning to believe in me. I did not fully believe before. I had an anxious foot that was ready to hit the gas pedal at a moment's notice. Now I sense I am all in.
I do not want to be the hero of the movie, as this is not a movie, and the postmodern ironic hipster in me wants to police any self-comparisons to movie heroes. Adopting a heroic archetype though, despite how corny it may be, does have a self-motivating effect.
Heroes have to sacrifice something, but maybe what needs to be sacrificed is the heroic archetype itself. Maybe the new world does not need old heroes.
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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