Vibes Break Narratives
I just presented a “situational assessment” on the Luigi Mangione situation at The Stoa:
Here are some of the terms used in the presentation:
A few premises from the presentation:
Vibe shifts are pre-verbal and proto-propositional knowings, emerging from some event or happening.
Vibe shifts break existing narratives, creating narrative violations.
As things become increasingly confusing, people will create (or rediscover the ancient practice of) “community-as-media” (Busta and Internet)—spaces where people gather to sense what is true (“sense-making”) and what is important (“meaning-making”), a.k.a. what you pay attention to.
However, communities can be good or bad, and presently, “all communities are terrible communities” (Tiqqun)—a premise I further elaborated on in the Terrible Communities series.
If a community is terrible, it will corrupt the sense-making and meaning-making of its members.
There is no non-terrible community without communion.
You can watch the full presentation here:
The presentation was followed by an unrecorded collective inquiry. A few additional premises from the inquiry:
When narrative violations occur, people rush to own and force-fit the happening awkwardly into their pre-existing narratives, needing to know “whose side” someone’s on. I suspect this comes more from a desire for control than a desire to understand.
Seeing (and sensing into) Mangione’s social media feed, he seemed better understood as a lost young man trying to make sense of the world on his own.
Mangione was a tech bro, but he was not yet “bropolitical,” because, and I could be wrong, he didn’t seem to have any real bros to help him with sense-making and meaning-making, which could have better supported his choice-making.
This is understandable. Someone with such high intelligence and agency, especially if they become autodidactic “schizos” through online rabbit holes, often experiences existential loneliness, as few people can witness them in their full complexity. The unfortunate side-effect of this loneliness is losing one’s mind prematurely.
With enough narrative violations, everyone is going to lose their minds eventually. The main question to live with is: Who are you going to lose your mind with?
Vibe shifts are occurring more frequently, prompting people to learn to “speak” in a “language” of vibes (McLuhan’s “post-literate society.”)
Vibes break narratives. The stronger a collective becomes in vibe literacy, the more apparent it will be who holds real power, forcing many to own their power and recognize what is truly needed to express it fully.
I am considering doing more of these. However, the questions we live with and the people who attend are important. Consistency is key—just as a jazz band improves the more they practice, collective inquirers become better at sense-making, meaning-making, and choice-making the more they inquire together.
I’ve locked down my Substack related to the premises above, but I still check messages at least once a week. If you’re receiving this in your email inbox, you can email me by pressing “reply” or messaging me here:
If you have any questions, insights, feedback, or criticism on this entry or more generally, message me below (I read and respond on Saturdays) …