Epic Activities
Hey beautiful people,
I hope everyone is doing well.
Tomorrows events
The Psychotechnology Playground w/ Bonnitta Roy Every Friday @ 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here. 60 mins.
Collective Presencing w/ Ria Baeck. Every Friday @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Emotional Dojo w/ Kira Kroger. June 19th @ 3:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Socratic Speed Dating w/ Raven Connolly Every Friday @ 7:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 60 mins.
The Dark Stoa w/ Pat Ryan. Every Friday @ 8:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
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June 18, 2020
EPIC ACTIVITIES ONLY IN 2020!
Akira the Don emailed that to John Vervaeke and myself after we booked the Steal the Culture event that will be happening at The Stoa on July 6th. We will be listening to Akira’s new song featuring John’s first Stoa visit when he initially mentioned that phrase. It is going to be an epic event.
Yesterday James Carse, author of Finite and Infinite Games, came to The Stoa. It was also an epic event. I have caught up on Stoa administrivia, such as uploading a backlog of videos, launching the new gift economy page, and creating a new event booking system for the facilitators. Now this cowboy's creative juices are flowing, his ambition is growing, and he only wants to do epic activities.
Should I chill with using the word epic though? I already see all the nerdy rationalists waving their fingers saying I am not being descriptive enough. I obviously want to tell them to fuck off, but they might have a point. I do not want my outrageous levels of thumos to turn this project into some tacky pop culture philosophy.
I want some serious philosophy to happen at The Stoa, and I want this philosophizing to be untethered from institutional masturbatory status games or Blue Church signalling against blue-collar wisdom and aesthetics. I like the phrase blue-collar, and while the bulk of my work career has been white-collar, I never spiritually felt at home there. Glancing at a definition of blue-collar: having, showing, or appealing to unpretentious or unsophisticated tastes. Also: dependable and hard-working rather than showy or spectacular.
Yes. I like swearing, mispronouncing words, making inappropriate jokes, working hard, and listening to Johnny Cash, which I am doing right now. Of course I can code-switch, and be polite, proper, and worst of all, precious. I clean up nice, but I prefer getting dirty, and what is philosophy without getting dirty. I do not want a philosophy that cannot be sloppy, ugly, or wrong in the right way.
This is why I like the cowboy metaphor. A cowboy does not give a shit about precious details, and is happy about getting messy. During this meta-crisis and in the complex ontology of this liminal war—which both require us to make many safe-to-fail probes and sometimes unsafe-to-fail ones—we cannot be too fucking precious. In this Game B frontier we may need a cowboy or two.
In yesterday's journal entry I shared a compliment I received which said I was a horseless cowboy. Does this cowboy need a horse to ride during this meta-crisis? I received a thoughtful email from somebody who reads my journals …
I read your letter this morning and was filled with a sense of concern about this cowboy bullshit … You need a horse or you'll be wading into the other cowboy and cowgirl messes scattered across the plains of Game A. If you're going to ride a horse, I suggest you study the native american conception of this relationship.
Horse (tamed by cowboy) is definitely the spirit animal of a recent/dying era. And how can a spirit animal be meaningful when it is actually the spirit of the broken and enslaved horse that gets the shit done.
I am not convinced that this cowboy should find a horse, but now I am confusing myself with all of these metaphors. I really just want to do epic things, and I am seeking out whatever metaphor I need to inspire me to make epic things happen. When I use the word cowboy I understand I am referencing the fictitious John Wayne-esque archetype rather than actual cowboys during the American frontier, which probably was a diligent and unglamorous cattle-tending existence.
But this is my inner nerdy rationalist coming online now, and I want to tell it to fuck off, because we do not have time for nerdiness. It is time to do epic things, but I want to do it in a way that does not break and enslave spirits, and I think this can be pulled off.
The other thing I like about the cowboy archetype is that they are crafty and resourceful with very little resources. This resonates. I sense us Stoics can do big things with very little. I sense we can ride towards a new world without a broken horse.
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