The Perfect Day
Hey friends,
I just finished a really good event with Jasna Todorovic. I am going to attempt to upload the backlog of videos this week.
Events for the next three days:
Writing Meditation w/ Davood Gozli. Every Wednesday @ 9:00 AM ET. RSVP here: April 29th.
Human Systems Life Action Redesign w/ Sara Ness and Anne-Lorraine Selke. April 30th @ 2:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
Shame Breakthrough Bootcamp w/ A.J. Bond. Every Thursday @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here: April 30th.
Existential Dance Party w/ Collin Morris. Every Thursday @ 8:30 PM ET. RSVP here: April 30th.
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April 27, 2020
Now we are ready. Now we build.
I was at a loss as to what to write this morning. A part of me wants the rest of my entries to be love letters to the feminine, but I sense that that is not what the feminine desires from me, and it seems like something a spiritual beta male would do. Instead, with a sober mind and a longing heart, I now want to Stoically put my focus on building a better world.
Maybe these can still be love letters, as I secretly desire to indulge in my spiritual betahood, but these love letters won't be obvious, or gaudy, or needy. The feminine does not desire needy men, she desires a man who does not need her. While I desire her with a full heart, I am doing my due diligence as a Stoic and engaging in negative visualizations, to prepare myself to die alone, at the fall of Rome. A good Stoic may not always have to sacrifice himself for others, but he should be prepared to do so at a moment's notice.
Of course, I do not desire to die alone, I desire to be at the bonfire with you all, and to listen to the music. I can hear it already faintly, and see it as well, in fragmented images. A man with vision is not afraid to see what deeply calls forth his being. It will be a beautiful moment when I can rest, after the war is over, because I have found the others, my embodied tribe, and have cohered with them.
But now is not the time to indulge in images and get seduced by futures that may not arrive. There is still no tomorrow, and I am still not worthy, but I am a man possessed, with vision and a longing heart. This makes me dangerous in the right way. Now is the time to stop fucking around, and get down to spiritual business.
To speak in comic book terms, which sometimes are the best terms to speak in: the bad guys are distracted at the moment, and this is our moment to quietly steal the culture, or as Raven said, seduce it. I sense that stealing and seducing the culture are one and the same, looked at from the masculine and feminine perspectives respectively, and they require us to develop a unique talent stack.
I sense that we Stoics need to become tricksters, who move in unpredictable ways, whose public words are authentically masked in a healthy postmodern language, in order for us to arrive unnoticed and to avoid the egoic noise of the mob. We also need to have the capacity to be philosopher warriors, who can cut through the bullshit, using the right proposition, which will be deeply penetrative to those on the receiving end.
We can only do that if we have the capacity to speak from the heart, and not just from the propositional architecture we’ve developed, or—worse—borrowed. And with the guidance and inspiration of the philosopher queens, we will have the capacity to be seductive, which, of course, requires game, or, in the case of our metamodern condition, metagame.
I also feel an obligation for us Stoics to model a new sanity, because, if this liminal war heats up, and I am pretty confident it will, more and more people will lose their jobs, along with their minds. They will no longer feel functional in propping up the old world, the Game A world, which is the world of culture wars and egoic deathworks. Their tomorrow will die and they will be placed at the knife's edge, and that is when the demons will attack.
Not everybody is a practiced Stoic, nor has loving friends with strong minds, so they might not make it to the other side—I barely did. This concern is real, and we may not have that much time. I sense that Stoicism is the best response to this mental health crisis that is tagging along with our meta-crisis. Stoicism is the philosophy of sovereignty, and it's time to make it cool and sexy, so others can fall in love with it.
It is time for us to be radically truthful, in the right way, and be modellers of virtue, and—most importantly—believers in beauty. It's simple, really: meaning is always right in front of us, it's just difficult to be simple in the right way. At yesterday's Oxytocin Party at The Stoa, Raya put us into break-out rooms and asked us to describe our perfect day. I was at a loss for words at first, and was annoyed at my mind pressuring me to describe it as some kind of fossilized to-do list.
My perfect day can never be known in advance, or described with certainty, and every moment feels meaningful, with a delicious unknowingness as to how the story will unfold. It is like getting lost in a really good movie, but, instead of watching it, you are acting in it, with a spiritual improvisation that has an existential gravitas. In essence, my perfect day is an adventure, and right now my life is an adventure.
I am having a hard time reading books or watching movies at the moment, because I am much more interested in my life right now, and in how it is unfolding. And now my mind keeps turning to this quotation from my favorite author, Hermann Hesse, who describes all this with beautiful eloquence:
To be able to throw oneself away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile—that is happiness.
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