Culture War as a Christian Practice
Tomorrow’s events:
Metapsychology w/ Zak Stein. September 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th. 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
Metamodern Masculinity w/ Arran Rogerson. September 7th @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Flowing With Unknowingness w/ Tyson Wagner. Every Monday @ 8:30 PM ET. RSVP here. 60 mins.
Newly posted events:
Philosopher Queens w/ Rachel Haywire, Raven Connolly, and Alyssa Polizzi. September 11th @ 8:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
Painting With Words: Loving Transformation or Something w/ Tim Adalin. September 29th @ 8:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
An event to get excited about:
The Glass Bead Game w/ Laurence Currie-Clark. September 12th @ 3:00 PM ET. Click on the image to RSVP.
Laurence Currie-Clark visits The Stoa to guides us in playing a sensemaking game he invented called The Glass Bead Game:
The Glass Bead Game is a way of playing with the ideas of human culture; it uses them like a painter paints with the colors on the palette. The insights of the world’s great scholars and artists have been reduced to core topics, with which the Glass Bead Game player plays. It is up to us to design and perfect the game. Theoretically, this game can contain the entire knowledge of the universe.
😯
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September 6, 2020
Somebody from Bayerischer Rundfunk—a major public-service radio and television broadcaster in Munich—asked if they could use some of the Cancel God audio in a piece they were doing on cancel culture. I said no.
If this meme art gets pulled into the culture war noise, it is just going to be stupidly weaponized, which should have been glaringly obvious to me when creating it. I already gave my mea culpa on that. The daemon asked me to create it, and I did, and that’s that. I am still proud of it, but my preferred indifferent is that it does not go viral anymore than it has.
The German media caught wind of it because some IDW types in Germany used the graphic without our consent, and a bunch of people on the left in Germany started dunking on them. Yeah, these are dumb interactions that I do not want to be associated with. That being said, once you unleash something on the internet it is no longer yours, so I’ll just have to Stoically roll with where this goes.
Relatedly, I am somewhat nervous about September 21st. We have three thinkers that have some controversy behind them, and who have found themselves in the cancel culture cross-hairs: Derrick Jensen, Alexandr Dugin, and Brett Weinstein. If the Cancel God does not get a whiff at this line-up then I am playing some good cancel culture chess.
These figures have said things the woke tribes do not approve of. The bulk of their work is not based on what makes them problematic though, and I am not inviting them to discuss why the woke tribes view them as problematic. I am not sensitive about this cancel culture stuff because it might limit financial opportunities. If anything, I can probably lean into being cancelled and make good money from it—what Jules Evans calls being a culture war profiteer.
I do not want to go down that route, and culture war hot topics are not hills I am interested in getting cancelled on; I would rather the main focus at The Stoa be something else, like addressing the meaning crisis and meta-crisis. There are so many people who are not in the cancel culture cross-hairs whom I would like to have visit, and these people might not visit if The Stoa becomes unfairly bestowed as some anti-woke reactionary safe-haven.
It is obviously not. Bullshit narratives easily get cobbled together during the culture war though. I do sense I can cleverly side-step this. I am betting that my meta sensitivities to the culture war, along with my code-switching ways, can avoid any culture war trip-wires that would trigger such narratives.
My sense is that something like this could only happen if somebody gets a hate-boner for The Stoa and engages in some conscious reputation attacks via woke shaming strategies. Why would anyone want to get a hate-boner for The Stoa though? We are so lovable.
Speaking of love, Paul Vanderklay visited The Stoa this week. He is a Christian. I was baptized as a Christian, in the Eastern Orthodox Church. I cannot say with confidence that I am a Christian, as I have not been going to Church regularly. I still wear my cross though, and I feel deeply resonant with the faith. I also feel I am still up for grabs, and may become a full-fledged Christian one day.
Something came up in this talk that really spoke to me: the culture war is an opportunity to practice one's Christianity. It was always obvious to me the culture war is an opportunity to practice one's Stoicism. When you get unfairly attacked you can go into your inner citadel, and focus on what is under your control. I never really reflected on the Christian element though.
Paul said culture wars are good places for Christians because Christians have something other tribes do not: an emphasis on loving enemies. Maybe the Stoics talk about this somewhere, but I have not seen the Stoics talk much about love. I think this is what the Christians get right. Just reflecting on this puts me at peace.
The Stoics do talk about having a sage in mind. Someone you can reflect on when life throws its challenges at you. I think Jesus Christ is a good sage to have come to your mind, and heart. I do not want culture war noise to come my way, but if it does come my way I want my response to be a loving one.
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