Letting Go
My friends,
I had a really pure conversation with my friend Collin Morris today. We discussed provisional promise lands, the meta tribe, the gift economy, and digital dance studios. Be sure to RSVP for his upcoming Existential Dance Party on Thursday.
In the evening, Guy Sengstock came to The Stoa. Our friends John Vervaeke and Christopher Mastropietro were there as well. A first step to see if the dialogos project can catch fire.
Tomorrow’s event:
Prototyping Collaboration w/ Richard Bartlett. April 8th @ 12:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
I would love for regulars at The Stoa to make it to this event. Richard is going to inquire how The Stoa can become a collaborative space.
***
April 7, 2020
I discovered the identity of my mysterious friend, the individual whom I mentioned in a previous entry, who was inquiring, with a confused existential wonderment, about what The Stoa is, and who I am. He sent me a thought-provoking email last night. I found this part salient:
You call yourself the Steward, a noble distinction from the Shepherd/King. It implies a looseness of grip to the process. A caretaker. How will you respond to the potential for a hierarchy to emerge in The Stoa? Will it be suppressed or facilitated?
I hope the session I will be having with Richard Bartlett tomorrow, called Prototyping Collaboration, will be the starting point for The Stoa to recognize itself, and hopefully begin to inquire collectively into these great questions my new friend has posed. But I want to double click on his comment about my being the steward.
I chose that term without too much thought: I was simply looking for a term that conveyed the act of someone taking care of a space. Through a brief thesaurus exploration, I stumbled on the word 'steward.' Given my novelty bias towards jazzy terms, I went with it.
After receiving that email yesterday, I did some Wikipedia research into the etymology of the word. "In medieval times, the steward was a servant who supervised both the lord's estate and his household." This feels right. And when my new friend says that there is an implication of a loose grip on the process, that also feels right.
This accurately describes how I am organically approaching this project. I am trying my best not to let my uptight ego try to control or manipulate things and at the same time, I do not intend to stop listening to my daemon.
I had a related insight a few days ago: given that I am in the midst of an intense love affair with my daemon, and thanks to our history of breaking up multiple times, I believe I am developing a keener sense of how to have the right kind of relationship with my daemon. I think this is helping me develop a better relationship with other people's daemons.
With the emerging facilitators of The Stoa (A.J., Raven, Daniel, Collin) I feel as though I were dancing with their daemons, or maybe I am simply dancing with the daemon. This brings me to a question that part of me wants to avoid, but I know my fingers are going to keep typing whether I want them to or not: If I am the steward of The Stoa, who is the lord who owns it?
Fuck. I sort of knew this was going to happen. Shit is about to get mystical. I have an urge to engage in some ironic distancing to lighten the mood, but Terry Patten is coming to mind. I think it was he who wisely scolded my friend Daniel Thorson on the Emerge podcast about our generation's proclivity to default to this stance. It is also curious that Terry somehow found his way to The Stoa this week.
My ego just let out a sigh. I have to let The Stoa go. Or, better put, I have to let go of the thought that I ever had it. A steward does not own his lord's house.
***
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.