Being Uncharitable
Hey friends,
I hope everyone had a good weekend. There are a lot of great sessions coming up this week. RSVP to the ones which resonate:
Socratic Speed Dating w/ Raven Connolly. April 6th @ 7:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
The Stoic Breath w/ Steve Beattie. April 7th @ 9:00 AM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Circling Through the Meta-Crisis w/ Guy Sengstock. April 7th @ 7:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
The Consequential Lag w/ Peter Wang. April 9th @ 10:00 AM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Self Awareness in a Crisis w/ Yancey Strickler. April 9th @ 7:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Liminal War: The Rise of Info Militias w/ Jack Murphy. April 10th @ 4:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Socratic Speed Dating w/ Raven Connolly. April 10th @ 7:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Situational Assessment w/ Jordan Hall. April 11th @ 11:00 AM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
More to come!
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April 5, 2020
In yesterday’s entry I wrote aggressively about the Modern Stoic movement. I was in a weird state yesterday, with an intense energy, which had a fuck you quality about it. Rereading my words now, I realise that I would not have written them today, as it is clear that they were not written with the principle of charity, which I try to uphold in intellectual discourse.
However, I also appreicate the fact that I was uncharitable, because I do have uncharitable thoughts, and that fuck you energy flushed them out for everybody to see. Now I have to answer to them and clean them up. What irks me about a lot of intellectuals—not just Stoic intellectuals—is that there is a pretense that uncharitable thoughts do not exist in their minds.
They have arrived with their philosophy, figured shit out and have purged themselves of intellectual imperfections. But here I go again, with more uncharitable thoughts. Who am I even talking about at this moment? I admit that when I bring to mind the archetype of a certain type of Stoic, or intellectual more generally, I get annoyed.
I am glad that I do not consider myself an intellectual, because I want to be free to speak uncharitably at times, because sometimes that is how the truth tries to find its way out of the dark. While I did not follow the principle of charity in yesterday's entry, I do not think I was altogether wrong either.
This morning, I received an email from a lady who asked me to remove her from The Stoa’s mailing list, because of my comments. While reading her email, I sensed the annoyance that she felt about my comments, and it was clear to me that she felt some kinship with the Stoics whom I was criticizing. I was patient with her and invited her to stay.
I am trying to do something different here. The Stoa is a space hosted by a Stoic, albeit an unconventional one, but I do not see it solely as a place to talk about Stoicism. I am in full alignment with Epictetus on this: "Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it."This is a space to discuss what is most important at the knife's edge of this moment, not to have dry, academic discussions about Stoicism.
I understand that a lot of people will not get what I am doing here, especially at first blush. But the daemon gets it, and I think this is a good thing, because it will filter for people who are ready to get it. Those of us who are ready to get it can start shaping it together.
At the end of Pat Ryan’s recent lecture at The Stoa, somebody expressed the following to me privately in the chat box. Unfortunately I was closing the session down, so I did not catch the person’s name, but I did copy what he wrote:
Peter, thanks for holding these events. Gotta be honest with you, I'm still not really sure what is going on here. Is this a group of Stoics? Is this a place to practice Stoicism? Who are your guests? Who are you?
I admit that this gave me a really good chuckle. My response? I do not know who you are, but I am still figuring out who I am.
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