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The Last Man Syndrome
Dear beautiful people,
I hope you had a wonderful day!
Tomorrow’s events:
The Stoic Hustle w/ Peter Limberg. Every Tuesday @ 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM ET. RSVP here.*
Dialogos w/ John Vervaeke, Guy Sengstock, and Christopher Mastropietro. Every Other Tuesday @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Raw Sexuality: Dark Eyes w/ Leslie Rogers. June 30th @ 8:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
*Watch a presentation on the practice here. You can come and leave as you leave throughout the 5 hours.
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June 29, 2020
I woke up at 5:30, but rolled out of bed around 6:00. I walked to the local coffee shop that is open early, and I got a cortado, because cortados are my weakness. It is Christoph’s birthday today, that wild man whose only plan is to stay wild. I sent him a voice message wishing him a happy birthday, and I encouraged him to stay loyal to his plan, because these wild times need wild men.
I was thinking of Nietzsche’s Last Man recently, which Nietzsche wrote about in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.
Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
I want to write an article about the Last Man Syndrome. I see this dis-ease in a lot of people, including myself. This dis-ease consists of self-domestication, and a womblike existence, where comfy addictions are around every corner. If one has this syndrome the will to create is fully replaced with the will to consume. The large life that the daemon asks of us is drowned out by the small life the demons gaslight us with.
Christoph, one of my best friends, is also my man muse. He still has chaos dancing inside him, and it is absolutely infectious when you are in his presence. He is visiting Toronto soon, and I fully intend to get into trouble with him, in an act of rewilding, and resistance against the dis-ease that has spread throughout our city streets.
Along with my desire to create, I have a desire to engage in deep temperance, and what us Stoics call voluntary hardship. Give me some of those cold showers, some of that intermittent fasting, and some of that sweat from lifting weights in the summer heat. The large life the daemon asks demands some sweat.
I want to be wisely uncomfortable, and I want to say fuck you to all the little pleasures that are littering my existence.
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