Culture War Battlefronts Part 3: Institutional Knowledge Versus Stigmatized Knowledge
Tomorrow’s events:
Stoic Breath w/ Steve Beattie. Every Wednesday @ 7:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
The Stoic Hustle w/ Peter Limberg. February 9th to 12th @ 8:00 AM ET. Patreon event. 3 hours
Embodied Book Club: Collective Presencing w/ Ria Baeck. Every Second Wednesday @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Shadowplay: Path of the Wounded Healer w/ James Hollis. February 10th @ 2:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Newly posted event:
Chapel Perilous w/ Rebecca Fox and Peter Limberg. Sundays @ 12:00 PM ET on February 28th, March 7th, 14th, and 21st. RSVP here. 75 mins.
Chapel Perilous is back and so is Rebecca Fox, aka our favorite (maybe) post-Skeptic. Rebecca and I have teamed up and created a “graphic article” called Chapel Perilous, which will be released soon. You can catch a sneak peek of some of the panels in the invitation below. Yes, those are indeed illustrations of Rebecca and the steward. :)
The graphic article will be released with a 10 minute(ish) video and a 4-part event series at The Stoa that will lead us to the Maybe the End of The Stoa Party. We do need help in creating the video that will stylishly animate Rebecca’s illustrations. If you have such skills and are willing to help, please message me by replying to this letter.
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February 9th, 2021
This is part 3 of 4 in my exploration of culture war battlefronts. Today’s entry will be juicy ...
INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE VERSUS STIGMATIZED KNOWLEDGE
The term I found quite helpful in understanding this battlefront is what Michael Barkun, the author of A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, calls “stigmatized knowledge.” In a paper called Conspiracy Theories as Stigmatized Knowledge, Barkun describes this type of knowledge as:
Most conspiracy theories exist as part of “stigmatized knowledge” – that is, knowledge claims that have not been accepted by those institutions we rely upon for truth validation. Not uncommonly, believers in conspiracy theories also accept other forms of stigmatized knowledge, such as unorthodox forms of healing and beliefs about Atlantis and UFOs.
With this understanding of stigmatized knowledge, a slew of things can fall under its definition: conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, magick, general woo sounding things, and paranormal research such as parapsychology, Ufology, Cryptozoology, etc.
As mentioned in a Letter exchange with my good friend Lubomir, what I see is a knee-jerk acceptance and knee-jerk rejection of stigmatized knowledge. I speculated as to why:
… at their core, these knee-jerk reactions towards stigmatized knowledge originate from unexamined shadow elements, which lead to a form of motivated reasoning. I could be wrong, but I sense that those who are completely captured by conspiracy theory narratives are motivated by a deep jealousy, coupled with paranoid distrust of the expert class, while those who reject conspiracy theories without applying “rule omega” are motivated by snobby elitist status play, possibly coupled with the fear of losing their minds.
The same dynamic is happening with institutional knowledge—knowledge claims that have been accepted by those institutions we (use to) rely upon for truth validation—knee-jerk acceptance and knee-jerk rejection. A generalized distrust is occurring towards the proselytizers of institutional knowledge or, to use Jordan Hall's catchall, the Blue Church.
As our friend Gregg Henriques describes:
…Blue Church refers to the established wisdom and power structures that were grounded in the institutions and modernist sensibilities that structured society and broadcast how we ought to live our lives as cultured, upstanding citizens. When I was growing up in the 1980s, the big three networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS), along with major newspapers like the Times and the Washington Post, would offer information about the world, governance, policy, and current events. At that time, these broadcast structures and the institutions they reported on were functioning adequately and had genuine legitimacy.
Thanks to the increasingly obvious politicizing and partisanship of legacy media after the 2016 election, any posturing of “performative neutrality” stinks of bullshit. Trust in media has been consistently low, especially among those on the political right. Given this distrust, more and more people are turning to stigmatized knowledge, in a way that mushes them all together. People have been referring to this as “conspirituality,” a portmanteau of "conspiracy theory" and "spirituality." Think QAnon’ers and COVID deniers aligning with all sorts of woo.
I do not think the Blue Church should be blindly trusted, nor do I think we should blindly swim in a mush of stigmatized knowledge. I also do not think it is wise to ignore the methodologies of the Blue Church due to it being corrupted by various incentives or dismiss all stigmatized knowledge because it is not fully verified or coherent.
Possible synthesis: Autodidact or Allodidact Knowledge
The most interesting thinkers I know of, most of whom have already visited The Stoa, are what Samo Burja calls a live player: a person or well-coordinated group of people that is able to do things they have not done before. I find these thinkers are largely autodidactic, aka self-taught outside of institutions, and the live players residing in institutions like John Vervaeke are engaged in an intellectual journey uncommon within the institution, and their most culturally influential work is happening outside of academia.
I also sense the term allodidact might be a useful synthesis. I just made up this term, the prefix “allo-” means other, hence this term is meant to point to the same spirit of the bespoke sensemaking journey of the autodidact, but while doing so with others.
I view The Stoa as a potential space (or incubator for spaces) for allodidactism to flourish. Evan McMullen’s The Bridge series, and the adjacent community that is forming around it, is a perfect example. It was birthed from The Stoa, and an autodidact (Evan) put himself at the edge of his thinking in a good faith and non-monetizing way that affords allodidactism to emerge.
We need more spaces for this.
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