Tomorrow’s events:
Stoic Breath w/ Steve Beattie. Every Wednesday @ 7:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
The Problems with the Sensemaking Scene: Imagining Beyond the Echo Chamber w/ Ellie Hain and Tarn Rodgers Johns. October 28th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Social Design Club w/ Freyja and Joe Edelman. Every Wednesday @ 1:30 PM ET. RSVP here. Join the club here. 90 mins.
Newly posted events:
Emotional Effector Patterns w/ Laura Bond. November 4th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Summoning the Unseen: Poetry & Meditation to Conjure Deep Support & Inspiration w/ Brooke McNamara. November 16th @ 2:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Becoming Dragon Shadow Integration Cards w/ Cris Beasley. November 30th @ 7:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
An event to get excited about:
Recent Results in Ignorance Studies w/ Sarah Perry. November 2nd @ 6:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
When I asked Sarah Perry what she wanted to talk about at The Stoa she said this: the ethnomethodology/indexicality stuff and the problems with science and knowledge that it implies, and connecting that to a bunch of other stuff (history of psychology, tacit knowledge transfer on youtube, color mixing, etc.)
Now that sounds like a good time.
***
October 27, 2020
ContraPoints visited The Stoa last night. It was an interesting session, and I thought it went well. During that session somebody in the chats said: I wouldn't wish 10,000 YouTube comments on my worst enemy.
She has over one million subscribers on YouTube, and well over one hundred thousand comments on her videos, and yeah, that does not seem appealing to me at all. I still have the YouTube comments disabled on The Stoa’s channel, and in the descriptions of each video I link the letter where I gave a rationale as to why. Funnily enough, the comments are open on these letters (for now), and a few people were showing their disapproval of my decision.
One guy who really seems to like YouTube comments wrote: I have many angry emotions welling up inside me right now directed at you, but I will practice the pretentious Stoicism you adore so much and boil alone in silence until it explodes.
Comments like these are just the beginning. I will get more of them if this project grows. My initial reaction reading his comment is to experience negative emotions, similar to emotions he seems to be experiencing, and then I want to call him a fool, and then move on. I sense I need a different system to Stoically process these outrage fueled comments, especially if I am going to receive more of them.
Some outrage fueled comments will have some arguments you can learn from, but others will not have much, and I would like to learn from the ones with good arguments. It is difficult though, because if a comment is written with outrage, then you focus on the outrage, rather than the propositions at hand. If the studies are true, and it seems like they are, outrage spreads the fastest. Here is a quote from Smithsonian magazine on the topic: Joy moves faster than sadness or disgust, but nothing is speedier than rage.
I looked at that guy's comment again, and yeah, I feel a tinge of outrage reading it. If I stay with the outrage, which I am doing now, I feel the outrage grow and grow and grow, and I strongly desire a release for it.
My “narrative” is different from his. His narrative is directed at how stupid and unfair it is for me to have disabled the YouTube comments. My narrative is directed towards how stupid and entitled the guy's comment seems to me. Same emotion, different narratives.
It is the wrong move to try to prevent outrage transference. Outrage is too powerful of an emotion, and that is the wrong kind of “Stoicism,” to deny an emotion. Instead, it is wiser to get into the right relationship with outrage. Can I allow it to fill my body, and not let it hijack my rational capacities?
Yes. I can. Outrage is not a bad thing, sometimes you’ll need it, as fuel to protect the people you love. In most cases though, listening to it is not helpful, because what it is telling you is wrong. If you just try to avoid the internet, and culture war noise, you are denying yourself the opportunity to practice feeling the outrage, and then getting into the right relationship with it. You are denying yourself the opportunity to practice your Stoicism.
When we have a visitor at The Stoa, and something goes “wrong,” I usually make the following joke: this is an opportunity to practice our Stoicism. The regulars at The Stoa have heard this joke so much it is now akin to a dad joke (or maybe a Stoic Daddy joke), and they lovingly roll their eyes, but when the guest first hears it, it does get a laugh.
I sense it gets more than just a laugh. I sense it plants a seed. Everything that we have been conditioned to think is “wrong,” like somebody being late, or having a tech issue, can be reframed as a delicious opportunity, to get into the right relationship with all of reality. This includes all of the stuff we deny, push aside, and fail to process in ourselves, such as outrage.
If we do not squarely look at these unpleasant things and choose to see them as opportunities, then we allow ourselves to be victims of things outside of our control. And yes, I do think it is fair to say that we are all victims of things outside of our control, to varying degrees of intensity.
Regardless of how accurate your assessment of your victimhood is, we do not need to continue to live like a victim, or feel like one. This is that amor fati stuff of course, aka loving thy fate.
This is a harder game to play for some, but I do think it is the wiser game to play, much more so than getting narcissistic about your victimhood. It is also a game we can play while playing other games, such as addressing social injustices, our existential risks, and the evil that does exist in our world.
I still sense the world needs Stoicism reborn, and it will be reborn once we start seeing everything as an opportunity.
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http://patreon.com/the_stoa
I wonder if people were able to express their outrage as an I message and own it for themselves how that would land in our limbic field? I think an I-rage would be easier to listen to than a You-rage.