COVID-19
Hello friends,
I hope you are doing well. We’ve had some really good events at the Stoa in the last few days, some of which were recorded …
A situational assessment from Jordan Hall. Recording.
A talk from Massimo Pigliucci on how to be a Stoic during a pandemic. Recording.
The prototyping of a psychotechnology that my mentor, Andrew Taggart, and myself are developing. We are going to call it Communitas Prayer. It was a really tender and sweet experience.
A breathwork exercise from a Stoic who is trained in the Wim Hof Method. Recording.
A group inquiry in how to embody the Stockdale Paradox.
Tomorrow’s event is a “caremongering meditation” w/ Jared Janes from the Both/And podcast. This is a meditation that will attempt to transmute our fear into care. 30 mins. 11 AM ET. RSVP here.
Many more events coming soon. You can check the website to see the current line-up.
Lastly, in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius, I’ve created an account on the Letter platform called Ta Eis Heauton. I am an official ambassador for Letter, which is apart of the humane tech movement. Like Marcus, I will be writing to myself regularly, in an attempt to ground myself in truth during these heady days. My first entry can be seen below.
If you’d like to join me, simply create an account on Letter and write to the Ta Eis Heauton profile linked above. I’d love to read how you are processing our meta-crisis.
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March 23, 2020
Six days have passed since the Premier of Ontario announced a state of emergency due to COVID-19. Ever since it dawned on me that this situation was going to become serious, I have been switching between focusing on keeping my wife and parents safe and thinking about how I can be of service to the greater whole.
My thoughts and emotions have been bouncing around. Things are moving fast. I have not discussed my Stoic practice much publicly, but, in these wild and uncertain days, it is time for me to come out of the Stoic closet. Marcus Aurelius regularly wrote to himself, which was not only a way to remind himself of his Stoicism, but to practice it as well. There is something about being patient with the written word that helps ground you in your truth. The remnants of his notes can be found in the Meditations, or Ta Eis Heauton, which is Medieval Greek for "things to one's self."
I created this ta eis heauton account so that I could write to myself regularly. To keep myself as close to my truth as I can. I’ll attempt to do short entries on a regular, if not daily, basis. For this first entry, I’d like to share a few thoughts I’ve had since the pandemic started.
What seems like months, but in reality was only a week or so ago, I received some personal bad news, which I won’t burden you with now. This was before COVID-19 received pandemic status and before the collective panic set in. I went through a mini existential crisis because of this and felt an inability to act on anything. A thought occurred to me: I do not know how to live my life. I have always felt this in some form or other, but never verbalized it in that way.
I have read many philosophy and self-help books, tried a variety of spiritual practices and goal-setting methodologies and have been lucky to have some great mentors, but I was still left with the feeling that I do not know how to live life well. There was something freeing about admitting this. There was always judgment associated with this lack of knowledge. An adjacent thought occurred soon after: nobody else knows how to live my life either. An existential weight was lifted for me at that moment.
Shortly after this, the collective consciousness started awakening to the seriousness of COVID-19. I have had many Zoom chats with people all across the world and the one thing that seems consistent is that everybody is confused and nobody really knows what to do right now. We are in the liminal. And I think this is an opportunity for us to build a relationship with this state, and become like Socrates and admit that the only thing we know is that we know nothing.
I feel the world more than I have ever felt it, or at least I think I do. The last wide-reaching event during my lifetime was September 11th, but this is different. We are more interconnected than we were in 2001: this event directly touches all of us, anyone could catch the virus, and we all feel the vibrations of the second-order effects of its spread. The uncertainty this brings, and the associated fear, is something we all have in common right now.
I am trying to be deployed as best as I can during this moment. One way I am trying to do that is to lean into this unknownness, and all the emotions it conjures, but with other people. I launched The Stoa last week, which I view as a digital campfire for us to gather around, to admit that we do not know much as individuals, and to see if we can respond to this together with wisdom.
The Stoa was a portico where philosophers gathered to discuss and dialogue. These philosophers were given the name Stoics because of this. I view the return of The Stoa not as a place to necessarily talk and practice Stoicism—although that will surely be part of it—but as a place for us to cohere and dialogue about what matters most at the knife's edge of this moment.
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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 wish to provide a gift in return, 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.