Dialogos Funday Mondays
Tomorrow’s events:
Stoic Breath w/ Steve Beattie. Every Wednesday @ 7:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
Broadcasting in the Sensemaking Web: An Un-Masterclass w/ David Fuller. December 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th. 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 75 mins.
Social Design Club w/ Freyja and Joe Edelman. Every Wednesday @ 1:30 PM ET. RSVP here. Join the club here. 90 mins.
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December 15th, 2020
Jordan Hall’s “reverse” Sensemaker in Residence series is turning out to be quite unexpected. The idea of the series is for Jordan to side-step the epistemic authority role, and instead put himself at the edge of his thinking, so we can assist him in his thinking.
Last week's session was somewhat of a mess, or at least the second portion was. I was under the impression that Jordan knew how he wanted to design the session, so I took a hands off role. It defaulted to a Q&A thing naturally, not without some tension. I decided to end the session early, and I did not post that portion on the YouTube channel.
Yesterday’s session also proved interesting, as Jordan was a no-show. In the 9 months of The Stoa’s existence, we’ve only had one other no-show. I took a more hands on role for the design of yesterday’s session, and luckily the design of the event did not need Jordan to be there. The original plan was for Jordan to be in dialogos with Forrest Landry, Bonnitta Roy, and Evan “The Bridge” McMullen.
The three of them were there, so we went ahead with the event, and it was an amazing conversation. I found out that Jordan missed it because he slept in, and he said, perhaps jokingly, that he is going to assume the daemon pushed him away from the screen in the morning.
I confess I am enjoying the emerging phenomena of “the daemon” becoming a catchall excuse for everything, including being a sleepyhead. I do sense he is right though, as I got a flash of daemonic insights after that session, which might not have occurred if he was there.
With or without Jordan, we will be continuing the dialogos sessions on Mondays, perhaps keeping the name “Deep Code Dialogos,” or maybe renaming it to something cutesy like “Dialogos Funday Mondays.”
The following people have already expressed interest in coming: John Vervaeke, Chris Mastropietro, Nora Bateson, Gregg Henriques, Greg Thomas, and Richard Bartlett.
I imagine this session could become the cool place to be, where thinkers come to put themselves at the edge of their thinking, while feeling safe to do so, in a container that they trust.
I have been systematically and strategically (in a daemonic way of course) inviting a diverse array of thinkers to The Stoa, most who would not be in conversation with one another, or who would not be platformed on the same YouTube or podcast. There is no place in the noosphere that has the memetically diverse guests that we have, and if The Stoa continues, it is just going to get more interesting.
For whatever reason, a thing I am good at is having a wide meta-view on the noosphere landscape. Most people—including most people in the metatribe (sensemaking web, metamodernism, Game B, etc.)—are insulated within an ecology of thought. I am plugged in with the metatribe, but I am also aware of who's who in the rationalist, woke, reactionary, psychotherapeutic, Buddhistic, non-dual, conspiratorial, socialist, anarchist, indie/outsider artists, and self-help scenes.
Maybe it is because I am intellectually curious, but I sense it has to do with my kinky para-egoic proclivities, which prevent me from getting triggered by all the different vibes the various memetic tribes have, but also allow me to get turned on by them. The plan from day one was to invite all these thinkers to The Stoa, in such a way that eventually encourages them to get into conversation with one another.
For example, Steven Hayes visited The Stoa yesterday, who is probably a new name to a lot of those in the metatribe. He is amazing, a co-discoverer of Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), which is one of the best psychotherapeutic modalities out there in my opinion. ACT has a big focus on values.
Now imagine Joe Edelman, who views values as the “atoms of meaning,” and who probably has done the most nuanced and accessible work on values, engages with Steven Hayes in dialogos. Throw in a professional philosopher who works in axiology, then you are going to get some interesting cross-pollination occur.
We do not even need a silly “anti-debate” framing that I once thought we needed. I sense we can avoid the rivalrous framing altogether, and just jump into these dialogos sessions. Evan was on fucking fire yesterday, and something he said was really good, and resonated with what I have been writing here: “perspective dancing” is a much better phrase than “perspective taking.”
Yes! Totally. Like real dancing though, there is skill involved. Stuff in our emerging wisdom gym will be helpful towards this, such as Empathy Circle and Collective Presencing, and maybe we can add Surrendered Leadership, Honest Sharing, and Social Meditation in the new year. There is also something else you need that is super important: you need a space for the dancing to occur, and this is where the steward comes in.
I wrote before about how The Stoa can be seen as a “Reality Tunnel Dance Hall”:
And I want to seduce all the memetic tribes, along with their reality tunnels, to come out and dance. The Stoa will be a reality tunnel dance hall. The tribes will dance, mingle, and sloppily make out, probably after getting high on a breathwork session.
Maybe there could be a spin-off in our wisdom gym, that we will call a “perspectival dance studio,” and maybe this is the trifecta that might emerge here ...
A Perspectival Dance Studio to get skilled at dancing with perspectives.
A Reality Tunnel Dance Hall to dance with perspectives.
A Dialogos Funday Monday for influential nodes in the noosphere to perspectivally dance.
It seems this stewarding role does require an original skillset. Being a spiritual bouncer is pretty important, as well as being a meta-troll. The former keeps one argus-eyed to the hungry ghosts, and the latter coaxes the hungry ghosts who are hiding in our midst to reveal themselves.
It's a delicate game, this stealing and seducing thing, and it is pretty fun. It is also kind of kinky, in a para-egoic way of course.
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