Do Wisdom Gyms Need Wisdom Trainers?
Tomorrow’s events:
Social Design Club w/ Freyja and Joe Edelman. Every Wednesday @ 1:30 PM ET. RSVP here. Join the club here. 90 mins.*
The Cultural Theory of Everything: Exploring 4Game Dynamics w/ Jamie Combs & Eric Brown. September 16th @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
*Aella Girl is returning to The Stoa tomorrow! The Social Design Clubbers will be looking at her Askhole game. This should be fun. :)
Newly posted event:
Philosopher Queens w/ Nina Power. September 18th @ 3:00 pm ET. RSVP here.
An event to get excited about:
Can You Know You Are Wrong? w/ Agnes Callard. September 17th @ 8:00 PM ET. RSVP by clicking the image below.
Philosopher Agnes Callard visits The Stoa to ask us the question: Do we know what it’s like to be wrong?
***
September 15, 2020
I want to write something clichéd, but I want to write it in a way to avoid sounding cliché. I will probably fail though, but failing can be good, so here I go: everyone reading this will not be alive one day. What a thing for us to have in common.
I do not know why this is coming to mind, and I do not want to get into the topic of death, and maybe that is a problem: abstracting death away as a topic. I cannot help but reflect on the transitory nature of everything these days. None of us really know where we are going, and if we are honest with ourselves, we do not know where we have been or where we currently are.
Comfort creates illusions, and in COVID land, these illusions are popping. I do not know about you, but I am not prepared for any of this. The majority are clinging to broken narratives, which are maladaptive to the complex ontology we are in. I sense the responsibility lays with us—the noosphere frontiersman and frontierswoman—to become preppers for these illusionary pops, and be there for those who are less prepared.
I still do not know how to describe what The Stoa is. I like the “communal podcast” framing, where the “community” and the collective intelligence it contains, converses with a guest that visits our digital village. This model seems to be working. The guests have been consistently telling me they had a blast, and the attendees have been enjoying asking questions directly to people they have been admiring from afar. They have also been creating good memetic artifacts, which people can enjoy after the fact.
I feel the communal podcast experience is figured out. It is only one aspect of what The Stoa is though. One of the other aspects is this “wisdom gym” thing. This one is less clear for me. Currently we just have a bunch of cool recurring events in Zoom rooms.
The idea though, is this: to have an ecology of practices, full of transformational psychotechnologies, that we can practice together. Hopefully this engenders sovereign individuals, who can get into communitas with each other. I was independently talking about this recently with Raine Revere, Adam Robbert, Joe Edelman, and Daniel Schmachtenberger. All of whom see potential with this wisdom gym thing.
There is something here, but I have no idea what it is. The vision is to have a gym-like schedule, with all these wisdom-based practices, that you can attend at your leisure. The metaphors you run with are important. I could have run with something like “digital monastery” instead. I did not do that though, because the wisdom gym frame feels more appropriate. Why is this?
I have never stayed at a monastery, but the sense I get is this: monasteries require a holistic commitment to a regimen that is supplied for you, designed by a wise teacher, who has an established philosophical framework. In contrast, gyms demand you to discipline your way to the space, and create your own routine. You bring your own philosophy to the gym as well.
How can we get this done? It could be something as simple as having a slew of practices, from a variety of traditions, and allow each individual to choose their own ecology. I sense there is a way to side-step the temptation to engineer something in a top-down way. The Stoa did not come about in a top-down way. It emerged, because I was listening, because we were listening.
I was not prepared for what now has emerged, and I did not need to be that prepared. I wonder if the wisdom gym can come about that way as well. Maybe it does not need a goal, or categorization system, or a fancy philosophy. Maybe it just needs a few wise “forcing functions” that will allow something to emerge, and these forcing functions can themselves emerge from the necessity of adapting to a world without illusions.
Gyms do have trainers though, so maybe “wisdom trainers” might be needed. Those who have stumbled their way to a degree of sagacity, who can guide others, via ecology design and practice accountability. I do sense there is a risk of “recuperation” here: all of these jazzy ideas will just be co-opted into some Gwyneth Paltrow-esque “wellness and lifestyle” company, and not have any real transformational effect.
This may end up in the ideational waste-bin, but I do sense there is enough jazz here to leave this as an open-inquiry. A new world needs new ideas, or at least old ideas repackaged and reframed in accessible ways.
***
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