The Meta-Crisis of the Meta-Crisis
Hello friends,
I hope everyone is doing well. :)
I will be speaking with David Fuller tomorrow at The Rebel Wisdom Festival on Sensemaking the Media Landscape.
Tomorrow’s events at the Stoa:
Stoic Breath w/ Steve Beattie. Every Sunday @ 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
Mediation Campfire w/ Jason Snyder and Jared Janes. Every Sunday @ 3:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
***
May 30, 2020
The meta-crisis has come online.
On one level I find this phrase descriptively rich, describing the interlaced existential risks and suffering risks that threaten our existence. Coupled with the inability to know what to do on an individual and on a collective level. But meta is such an abstract word, and it has the felt-sense of being disembodied.
I feel a lot of words, but how does one feel the word meta? The majority of people do not know what the fuck the word meta even means, oftentimes I use it without even knowing what I mean. I think Johannes Niederhauser summed it up the best when he tweeted the following: "I wonder when they will start talking about the meta-crisis of the meta-crisis."
I guess that is what I am doing now. I do not read or watch the news anymore, but I cannot escape what is happening with the riots. From a distance, it feels like the world is burning. Chaos is hitting the streets and during a pandemic no less. We have a great line-up at The Stoa next week but posting these events feels tone-deaf right now.
I had a beautiful conversation with Maybe Gray today. I will not go into details of what we talked about but we cried together. I met her over a week ago and people who have known each other this long usually do not cry together this sweetly. But in the meta-crisis of the meta-crisis, when everything feels so disembodied, so disconnected, so dissociated, crying with someone you sense is one of your people seems to be a wise move.
We talked about how I sometimes get confused as an asshole, because I am not afraid to say I am annoyed, for example, or call out egoic bullshit when I sense it. The side of me that does not get that much air time is the side of me that shows I really hate hurting people. I have hurt people in the past, I am sure, but if I found out I was hurting someone I would do everything in my power to stop doing what I was doing.
We also talked about the games we play, the ones that helped us cope in this Game A world. The games that gave us a verisimilitude of love, but not actual love. The ones where we attempt to engineer a guarantee, that never allow us to find a home. I want to find a home, and I am so tired of playing games.
I am getting the sense that a part of the metagame is calling out all the fucked up games we learned how to play in the old world: to find a mate, to keep a job, to not get cancelled by whatever memetic tribe we were pretending was a home.
It is the wrong move to throw away the Game A skills we got skilled at, even if they were learned in the service of pathological relationships or corrupt institutions. We can repurpose these skills to steal and seduce the culture.
***
Gift Economy / 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 are inspired to provide a gift to The Stoa, 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.